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This release improves user-friendliness introducing Xfce-4.4 as the new default desktop, customized for the scheme of interaction that is familiar to dyne:bolic users. Another important new feature is the ability to create an encrypted nest to prevent access to personal data stored in home directories. No complicated notions are required, our user friendly setup deals with usb and harddisk storages as usual, in case the nest is encrypted you'll see your home icon upgraded to fortress, then everything that goes in your nest is protected. Screenshots of dyne:bolic 2.4 are available at LinuxQuestions.org.

"During the Southern California Linux Exposition 5x's mini-conference on women in open source software, BSD Certification Group member Dru Lavigne put forth the idea that free/open source software provided an excellent opportunity to inexpensively change one's career path. Since this is an idea that has not been widely explored, Dru took some time to talk to me about it, as well as provide an update on the BSD system administrator certification program that is currently in development."

Last September, some of the Debian Linux distribution's leadership wanted to make sure that Etch, the next version of Debian, arrived on its December 4th due date. So, the "Dunc-Tank" group decided to experiment with financially supporting some key developers to get Debian out the door on time.

I don't "do" reviews. I have the objectivity of a New dad and the rare ability to avoid any measure of controlled enthusiasm...so asking helios to give distro reviews is like asking The Dixie Chicks to avoid Dairy Queen. It won't happen with any sense of dignity or self image.

Aonix has released version 1.0 of a virtual machine said to overcome Java's traditional weaknesses for "deeply embedded" systems. PERC Pico can be used with or without an embedded operating system such as Linux, and offers execution times "similar to C/C++ programs," with determinism in the low microsecond range, the company claims.

I have decided to make another distro I'm calling "Ubuntu Ultimate Edition" it has everything listed in the Christmas Edition plus much more. I have however removed Java, Flash and Acrobat reader due to licensing agreements. Please freat not included in the release is my custom repo which contains all the software and much more. Firefox's homepage will give a detailed description on obtaining all additional software from the repo. Screenshots of Ubuntu Ultimate 1.2 are available at LinuxQuestions.org.

Google's Summer of Code (SOC) will be back again this year, and this time, Google plans to take advantage of lessons learned to improve the program for everyone involved.

Auth Shadow or mod-auth-shadow is a module for apache (and apache2, sort of) that enables authentication against /etc/shadow. The benefits being that any system user with a password can be authenticated for web_dav, subversion or simply an https server. The only other way to do this is with PAM. That method is dangerous because the apache user (www-data in my case) must be able to read /etc/shadow. Obviously, not a good idea. Auth Shadow accomplishes this safely by using a intermediate program called validate. This works because validate can be owned by root but executable by everyone. In the event that your server is compromised through apache, your password file will not be readable.

Popular Linux distributor Mandriva yesterday announced plans to open an office in Nigeria in an effort to expand its market.

An India-based development services provider is offering Eclipse plugin-based GNU toolchains for Renesas processors, and an Eclipse-based IDE for Linux- and Windows-based development hosts. KPIT Cummins says its "KPIT Coronoa" IDE and KPIT GNU toolchains offer state-of-the-art features, and are suitable for commercial product development.

Beta6 of SimplyMEPIS 32 and 64 is available for testing. Now users can opt-in to choose the NVIDIA 1.0.9746 driver. Ntfs-3g improves Windows filesystem compatibility. NVIDIA legacy version 1.0.9631 is available for Beryl support with older chips... The Beta 6 iso also uses the ntfs-3g driver for reading and writing NTFS partitions from user space. For those who want it, the new NVIDIA 1.0.9631 legacy driver may be installed from the MEPIS package pools. Hibernate support has been improved for laptops. - DistroWatch. Screenshots of SimplyMEPIS 6.5 Beta 6 are available at LinuxQuestions.org.

Alfresco, a start-up that commercializes open-source software for helping customers keep track of their digital documents, has adopted the General Public License in an effort to attract outside programmers.

Time recently published an article entitled Getting rich off those who work for free which, among other things, talked about free software this way: "Open-source, volunteer-created computer software like the Linux operating system and the Firefox Web browser have also established themselves as significant and lasting economic realities."

This article explains how to write a perl script that can monitor your disk space under UNIX or Linux and send me an email alert to admin. There is a nice perl system routine called Perl df or Filesys::DiskSpace. This routine displays information on a file system such as its type, the amount of disk space occupied, the total disk space and the number of inodes etc.

Many thanks to the Linux Mint community from which we managed to gather precious ideas and feedback. We've brought a lot of changes into Bianca and we hope you'll like it. Here are the main changes: Minty Artwork and a brand new desktop... We've put a lot of efforts into Bianca and started writing our own applications and our own packages. A new repository was added to Bianca for users to be able to get the latest innovations through APT upgrades. It is also possible to upgrade from Bea to Bianca. - DistroWatch. Screenshots of Linux Mint 2.2 are available at LinuxQuestions.org.

LXer Feature: 23-Feb-2007

When Eric Raymond announced his departure on the Fedora Core developer mailing list, the developers returned with some interesting responses. Is Raymond really disappointed with the Fedora distribution, or is he simply making the change to Ubuntu for his new boss over at Linspire?

As Linux establishes itself as a mainstream operating system, and open source tools and applications prove their enterprise readiness, a growing number of organizations are talking publicly about their open source deployments and direction. Recently, Mok Choe, CTO at Union Bank in Monterrey Park, Calif., spoke with Network World Senior Editor Jennifer Mears about the financial institution’s decision to scrap proprietary Unix systems for commodity servers running Red Hat Linux.

Anyone who has used more than one personal computer understands that a system seems to become obsolete sometime after the purchase but before it's first boot. For a school district, this issue is compounded by the volume of computers it has to maintain. However, Dr. Anne Hyland, director of curriculum and instruction for Bexley City Schools, said the district is switching to a new operating system that will save the taxpayers a lot of money.

Comments made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last Thursday to an analyst conference for the most part went unnoticed until stories this morning cited excerpts from a freshly published transcript of that conference. In one such story, an excerpted partial sentence was interpreted as part of a statement that Microsoft may yet exercise its option to sue manufacturers of Linux operating systems other than Novell for infringement of patent.

A commercial supplier of open-source routing and firewall software has transitioned its community-supported firewall/router Linux distribution to a Debian base. Vyatta Community Edition 2 (VC2) is based on Debian, runs on commodity x86 hardware, includes excellent documentation, and supports numerous enterprise features, including serial T1/E1 cards, VLANs, RIP, and OSPF.