Showing all newswire headlines

It was earlier this month that version 2.1.0 of the xf86-video-intel driver was released, which among other things had introduced open-source Linux graphics support for the G33, Q33, and Q35 chipsets as well as fixing a horde of bugs and adding PCI IDs for the 945GME, 965GME, and 965GLE chips. As our last Intel graphics performance article was looking at the Q965 back in May, in this article we have enclosed some benchmarks from Intel's GMA 950 IGP using the new xf86-video-intel 2.1.0 driver.

Zabbix is a solution for monitoring applications, networks, and servers. With Zabbix, you can monitor multiple servers at a time, using a Zabbix server that comes with a web interface (that is used to configure Zabbix and holds the graphs of your systems) and Zabbix agents that are installed on the systems to be monitored. The Zabbix agents deliver the desired data to the Zabbix server. This tutorial shows how you can install the Zabbix server and agent on a Debian Etch system.

So I'm having a conversation on the phone with Scrap [another IT Toolbox member — Sander] this morning and he relayed this little story from his adventures as a professor of information security studies at a local school. I'm going to share this story with you and include my usual warning and disclaimer: Put your beverage down. Do not attempt to drink beverage while reading this. I am not responsible for liquids spilled in your keyboard or all over your screen! Scrap tells the story...

If you maintain a portal, ecommerce site, or heavily trafficked Web site, you might appreciate the ability to identify the geographical location of your site visitors. Geolocation information can help you localize content, serve relevant local advertisements, offer a download mirror close to visitors, and detect online fraud. Techniques like whois lookup of IP addresses are of some help, but they don't always find accurate locations. A better approach is a database that maps each IP address to a location -- such as MaxMind's GeoIP.

The latest installment of Pardus, version 2007.2, was officially released on, July 12, 2007. Worried this review has been rushed due to the recency of the release? Do not worry, I had been using the release candidate for a while now and installed the official release before authoring this review. Please note that this review is quite short, therefore I invite any Pardus users to write about their experience in the comments section.

If the command line is your preferred management interface, smooth out your keyboarding with these handy utilities.

Calls to make the BBC's on demand TV service work on all computer operating systems are to get a fresh look. The BBC Trust has offered to meet with open source advocates who argue that the corporation has a duty to make the download service platform agnostic. When the BBC iPlayer, as it is known, launches on 27 July it will only work with PCs running Microsoft Windows XP.

[Somehow this article avoids using the word Linux, but otherwise it's a good article. — Iain]

Apple has purchased the source code and all IP for CUPS, the prevalent solution for printing under Linux. Michael Sweet, developer of CUPS, will go to work for Apple, though working primarily on projects other than CUPS.

An FAQ has been posted at the cups website:

[url=http://www.cups.org/articles.php?L TFAQ]http://www.cups.org/articles.php?L TFAQ[/url]

Adobe patch critical security flaws in Flash Player for all platforms, and for once Linux (and Solaris) users do not get away scot free.

What many may describe as a ludicrous decision by a US federal court of appeal has threatened the immediate future of Internet radio, with many smaller net broadcasters saying they will not be able to afford new fees imposed by the US Government's Copyright Royalty Board. The new fee structure has resulted from intense lobbying from SoundExchange, a group representing artists and record companies.

[Isn't it nice to know that when they really want something, they get it? - Scott]

Procedure for creating a CSR on postfix MTA is just like web server. You need to use OpenSSL which is a cryptography toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) network protocols and related ryptography standards under Linux / UNIX. To configure postfix SSL SMTP you need 3 files
(a) The private key
(b) Your .crt certificate file
(c) CA certificate

Linux Postfix mail server SSL certificate installations and configuration

The OpenTaal project (Dutch for"OpenLanguage") has published the first open source word list to be certified by the Dutch Language Union as corresponding to official spelling. Simon Brouwer, project leader of OpenTaal, says,"This is a milestone. Users of open source software can trust their Dutch spell checker now. They have the guarantee that their word list is consistent with the official spelling."

Despite the “out of the box” nature of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, today’s lawyer needs to do more than create an Office document, send e-mail, or surf the net. He or she needs to use case management, litigation support, and billing/accounting software as well. Just go to your software vendor’s web site and click on System Requirements to see for yourself. It's available for Windows and the Mac, but not Linux

If you're a newb looking to dip your toe into the waters of the Linux world, Dell's line-up of preinstalled Ubuntu PCs is a very good first choice. After all, you'll be able to get started right out of the box, without having to struggle with unsupported hardware and missing drivers. But while Dell certainly appears to have the best offering of Linux desktops and notebooks at the moment, it isn't the only choice out there. Here are five alternatives for Linux-ready PCs.

With projects like Gobuntu and gNewSense aiming to provide a platform that is zealous about free software, the obvious question is “where can I run it?”. Pretty much any laptop you can buy today needs some sort of non-free bits to make the most of its hardware. Right now, software freedom isn’t a huge priority for most of the companies that make up components for the PC and laptop industry. To that end I’d like to build up a list of people would potentially buy a high-powered laptop if it were guaranteed to work completely with free software drivers and OpenBIOS.

We've recently hired our first CIO at MySQL, and it's interesting to consider how the role of the CIO is different from what it used to be. MySQL has some particular challenges from an information management perspective because we have so many employees working from home around the world. Otherwise, I think the role of CIO at our company is not that different from most other young companies. But what's really changed is the nature of IT in the past six or seven years.

Nokia's Navigation Kit for the N800 Internet Tablet works great when used in a car in metropolitan outskirts. However, the unit seems a bit pricey for what you get, is ill-suited to outdoor use, and seems to struggle holding a fix when the battery gets low.

The 2007 [Ottawa] Linux Symposium has run its course. All of the casualties from the closing party (perhaps made more numerous by the new practice of sending around waiters with trays full of shots of tequila) should have found their way home by now. Your editor has returned from this year's event; here's his summary of what took place.

I questioned the value of VC investments in OSS in a previous post. I estimated that the investments would have to be worth between $12.5B and $19.6B to be in line with the historical rate of return for VCs (i.e. 57%). Well, I was wrong, (somewhat). Matthew provided the yearly details of OSS VC investments and calculated that the investments would have to be worth $9.5B at the end of 2006.

Included in Andrew Morton's potential 2.6.23 merge list were a series of patches to make the x86-64 architecture tickless. Andi Kleen, the x86-64 maintainer replied, "I'm sceptical about the dynticks code. It just rips out the x86-64 timing code completely, which needs a lot more review and testing. Probably not .23." Linus Torvalds agreed, "we are *not* going to do another 'rip everything out, and replace it with new code' again. Over my dead body. We're going to do this thing gradually, or not at all."