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I have read roughly half a dozen reports telling horror stories about how many kernel related bugs are not getting to the developers out of fear of being treated like idiots. Speaking as a Linux user who has dealt with other developers in the past, this sounds likely to me.

There probably isn’t a serious hacker around that doesn’t know the name nmap. It’s a security term on it’s own, the opensource portscanner that has been around for as long as I can remember. Since it’s incarnation, nmap has been a command line tool. No point & click, just the power of the shell. A number of different GUI’s have been written, nmapfe, knmap, and so on. But now there is an official nmap GUI, Zenmap.

As I finish my testing on three different Linux supported wireless cards from Edimax running them on Ubuntu Gutsy, I discovered something that I think some people lose sight of. Because all three of these cards are using Ralink-based drivers of one sort or another, they tend to run a bit hot. And bundle that with a notebook not sitting on a notebook cooling pad and you have yourself one very overtaxed piece of hardware.

This document describes how to set up, configure and use TimeVault on Ubuntu 7.10. The resulting system provides a powerful backup system for desktop usage. TimeVault is a simple front-end for making snapshots of a set of directories. Snapshots are a copy of a directory structure or file at a certain point in time. Restore functionality is integrated into Nautilus - previous versions of a file or directory that has a snapshot can be accessed by examining the properties and selecting the 'Previous Versions' tab.

Amarok Headquarters reports yet again another release of the marvelous Amarok 1.4 'Fast Forward' series. Just like its predecessor, Amarok 1.4.8 fixes a fairly large amount of bugs, and therefore increases stability of Amarok's stable branch of development. Among the major improvements is the resolution of an issue that could, under some circumstances, cause a complete lockup during dynamic playback. Last.fm metadata fetching now also works with xine 1.1.8 and we made sure you can now also use your brand new iPods with your favourite music player.

Linux networking cookbook is a book for both a seasoned and new Linux network administrator. It includes valuable time saving recipes, tools and related resources. The book is written in clear and concise style with tons of examples and working code. Book covers wild verity of topics or so called recipes for Linux networking.

Syslets are a proposed mechanism which would allow any system call to be invoked in an asynchronous manner; this technique promises a more comprehensive and simpler asynchronous I/O mechanism and much more - once all of the pesky little details can be worked out. A while back, Zach Brown let it be known that he had taken over the ongoing development of the syslets patch set; things have been relatively quiet since then. But Zach has just returned with a new syslets patch which shows where this idea is going.

Developing secure applications has always been a difficult task. Software that manages critical functions once serviced only users on internal networks; today, applications run on Web servers accessible to users anywhere in the world. Not only have the scope and magnitude of Web applications increased, but so has the complexity of securing them. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) comes to the rescue of Web application architects with tools, frameworks, and guidelines to improve security in applications.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A Sonnet-based spellcheck runner, and icons on the desktop in Plasma. Continued work revamping KBugBuster, more work towards KDevelop 4. GetHotNewStuff support for downloading maps in Marble. Image and audio dockers in Parley. The start of Glimpse, a new scanning application based on libksane. The beginnings of a generic resource display framework for NEPOMUK. Various work in KHTML. Music Service configuration work, and the integration of last.fm code in Amarok 2.0.

The Asus Eee PC challenges many conventional assumptions about mobile computing. The daring, diminutive device combines a svelte subnotebook form factor with a unique Linux software platform and a budget-friendly price—factors that could make this unprecedented product a mainstream marvel. Last week, my colleague Jon described the Eee PC as game-changing: a characterization that we will put to the test in this review.

Adobe Acrobat is expensive, but that doesn’t mean you have to live a life without portable documents. What many people don’t realize is that PDF is a Federal Information Processing Standard, which means the specifications behind the format are widely published. Numerous developers take advantage of this fact and create programs that offer effective alternatives to Acrobat. Check out our list of these programs and take advantage of these tools that are full of some of the best PDF features and functions.

Is it possible to have training materials that are developed in partnership with the community, available under a CC license, AND make those same materials available through formal training providers? We’re trying to find out at Canonical with our Ubuntu Desktop Course. It’s already a 400 page book which gives a great overview of the Ubuntu desktop experience, a very valuable resource for folks who are new to Linux and Ubuntu.

This is something very interesting I found out not too long ago, while hashing out some work with a colleague. As most administrators (or users) who do a fair amount of shell scripting know, the error status or return code (Generally referred to as "errno" in all the man pages) of a process is a fairly common method to use in determining the process flow of a script. The one thing about the value of "errno" (or, literally, the variable "$?" in most shells) is that it's erased with each consecutive process that gets run. Here's how to work around that.

In San Francisco's Tenderloin district, amid liquor stores and boarded-up buildings, a partnership of nonprofits earlier this month sponsored the first "Tenderloin Tech Day." The half-day workshop was open to anyone in the low-income neighborhood with a tech problem. CNET News.com's Kara Tsuboi stopped by and chatted with people about their broken laptops, software-less hard drives, and their first-ever Internet experiences.

Picture this: It's late at night. You've restarted your computer. The optical drive is whirring contentedly, but you have butterflies in your stomach. Tonight is the night you install Linux for the first time. You choose your language, and then your keyboard layout. This is pretty easy, so far. A partitioner works its magic on your hard disk, either resizing your Windows partition or wiping it completely. Suddenly you are blindsided by the question: Which default desktop environment would you like to install?

Packt has released a new book on Qmail. Written by experienced author Kyle Wheeler, Qmail Quickstarter is a fast-paced and easy-to-follow guide that gets a Qmail mail server up and running quickly.

As far as the good old days of computing with x86 PCs is concerned, Robert Shingledecker and his team have been tirelessly evoking that nostalgic moments. Unsurprisingly, there is much more sweetness in this new version of Damn Small Linux 4.2. This timely-released version will definitely add more cheers to the New Year and Christmas festivities.

Intel has released source code for a server software project that lets Fibre Channel communications run on a more ordinary Ethernet network. Fibre Channel is a higher-end network technology used to connect storage systems to servers. Intel and networking giant Cisco Systems are among those working to adapt it for ordinary and ubiquitous Ethernet technology, a technology called Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), appropriately enough.

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 2 is now available for testing. The second beta of the next major Firefox version offers around 900 bug fixes over Beta 1, including several feature enhancements and fixes to improve speed, stability, security and memory usage.

Dell has caught up to the Ubuntu release machine, adding the latest version of the operating system as a standard option with Linux-friendly laptop and desktop.