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James Burgett is a great guy. He is collecting old computers from companies and individuals, checks and in some cases repairs them, and then gives them away to those who cannot afford to buy. He does it since 12 years, and each system is delivered with a free OS.

This document describes how to install a PureFTPd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. This is much more performant and allows to have thousands of ftp users on a single machine. In addition to that I will show the use of quota and upload/download bandwidth limits with this setup. Passwords will be stored encrypted as MD5 strings in the database. This tutorial is based on Fedora 7. You should already have set up a basic Fedora 7 system.

Linux vendor Linspire on July 11 said that the new Open XML translator is now available for use in its latest Freespire and Linspire distributions. The Open XML translator enables bi-directional compatibility, so that files saved in the Microsoft-created Open XML format can be opened by OpenOffice.org users, and files created by OpenOffice can be saved in Open XML format. Using the translator, OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office users will now be able to share files because documents will better maintain consistent formats, formulas and style templates across the two office productivity suites, a Linspire spokesperson said.

After the French Parliament’s migration to Linux, the Italian Chamber of Deputies (Camera dei Deputati) chose to let "The Penguin" enter into the heart of the Italian Democracy. As reported by the Italian newspaper Repubblica on July 10th, 2007, a plan suggested by the left deputies Pietro Folena and Franco Grillini to migrate all the computers of the Parliament from Windows to Linux was approved by the Chamber.

The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), the leading organization advocating for openness and accessibility to government documents and information, today congratulated Japan for adopting a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards. The new guidelines, available from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, were designed to be implemented by government ministries and agencies. The interoperability framework also suggests that the guidelines would also be useful for private industry.

With 320GB SATA drives on sale with free shipping, I decided to increase my workstation’s RAID capacity for the last time. One nice things about SATA drives with Linux these days is you don’t ever need to shut the system down. In fact, with SATA, Linux software RAID, and the XFS filesystem I was able to add 320GB of capacity to the RAID filesystem without even unmounting it. During the entire time the system was completely usable, including all data on the RAID volume. Here is how I did it.

I was reading a recent article in which the argument and proof is given for a number of Linux customers moving from Linux to Windows Server. To say so is a little misleading. What I see is, large companies like Overstock.com, Jelly Belly, and Unilever probably have something in common - a poor supporting IT staff to make Linux work, and work well!

When I first setup my VMware Server to run an existing Windows Install from a physical partition, I was asked to reactivate Windows XP before I could use it as a guest OS. I received a lot of complaints from people saying that they were then again asked to reactivate Windows again once they booted back into Windows natively, and then again under VMware and so on every time the OS was booted in a different environment. If you replace the WPA files prior to booting based on whether you’re using VMware or booting natively you won’t have to reactivate. Here's how to do it.

Episode 200 of The Linux Link Tech Show is available for download:
We're back after a 4 week vacation
We interview John Hull from Dell regarding their pre-installed Linux offerings
Dan updates his Linux podcast directory
Linc reviews the Apple mini-mouse and talks about setting up dual monitors
Linux distros and magazines that are now defunct
We discuss our plans for Ohio Linux Fest 2007
And much, much more

Audio Files available:
OGG
MP3

Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format specification is fatally flawed where it comes to spreadsheets, with many functions filled with careless errors, according to Rob Weir, a systems architect for IBM and a member of various ODF technical committees. Weir documented seven specific problems in a blog post, and said there are others.

MEPIS on July 9 announced the "Spartacus" release of antiX, a community-built, ultralight derivative of the MEPIS Linux distribution. AntiX (pronounced "Antics") is the personal project of MEPIS community member "anticapitalista," who engineered it as a free version of MEPIS aimed at old 32-bit PC hardware. AntiX is built using the MEPIS Linux 6.5 core, but mostly it has a different set of default user applications.

Dell Ubuntu Linux buyers were recently outraged when a price comparison between identical Inspiron 1420 laptops showed that instead of the Ubuntu system being cheaper, it actually ended up costing $225 more than the same laptop with Vista Home Basic Edition. "Bottom line this was an oversight, pure and simple," a Dell spokesperson told DesktopLinux.com. The prices have been reset to the appropriate prices.

Since January of this year we have been telling you that AMD has been silently working on R600 (Radeon HD 2000) support for their proprietary Linux "fglrx" driver. However, for the end-user the support isn't complete and still equates to being useless. But how does the recently announced Avivo R500 driver function with the newer R600 series? We have tried out an RV610 GPU in several configurations under Linux, and in this article we will tell you what works and what doesn't right now for the Radeon HD 2000 series.

Lenovo seems to have a love/hate relationship with Linux. Last year, it began offering its high-end T60p ThinkPad laptop with SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop). This year, the company is releasing its newest high-end laptop, the T61p ThinkPad, and once more, while it runs desktop Linux, the company isn't overly eager to let the world know about it.

LXer Feature: 12-Jul-2007

A look inside what makes KDE tick, a glimpse of what the future holds and more in The LXer Interview of Sebastian Kügler.

Prepare for your Linux certification or build fundamental skills on Linux systems administration. In this sixth installment from a series of nine tutorials on exam 102 topics, you will know how to manage users and groups, set user profiles and environments, use log files, schedule jobs, back up your data, and maintain the system time.

The next release of the Linux kernel will apparently gain an all-new scheduler said to deliver better desktop scheduling. Ingo Molnar's CFS ("completely fair scheduler") implements a fair scheduling approach long advocated by Con "Conman" Kolivas. Molnar, a Red Hat employee who maintains the kernel's scheduling subsystem, describes CFS as follows: "Eighty percent of CFS's design can be summed up in a single sentence: CFS basically models an 'ideal, precise multi-tasking CPU' on real hardware."

IBM today announced that it is granting universal and perpetual access to certain intellectual property that might be necessary to implement more than 150 standards designed to make software interoperable. IBM's commitment not only applies to the distributors, developers or manufacturers that are implementing the specifications involved, but also extends to their users or customers. It is valid as long as adopters are not suing any party -- not just IBM -- over necessary patented technology needed to implement the standards.

"I'm a bit of a rebel," Benjamin Mako Hill says,"with rather too many causes." Best known for his many roles in Debian, Hill is also a member of the Ubuntu Community Council, an advisor to One Laptop Per Child, a director of Software Freedom International, and the originator of several free software projects -- to say nothing of an active voice for the Free Culture Movement, and the occasional organizer of such activities as last fall's iPod Liberation Event in Cambridge, Mass. Hill recently took on his largest challenge yet as the youngest director on the Free Software Foundation's board of directors.

Another move in the software patent game. IBM is offering a patent covenant to implementers of a bunch of IT standards, with the catch being that you lose all of the covenant protection if you sue over any patent that reads on any software that's also covered by the covenant.