Showing all newswire headlines

In the crowded Linux packaging landscape, it would be easy to overlook Damon Courtney's InstallJammer. However, InstallJammer, which provides self-executing installers for Linux and other operating systems is well worth a look. Version 1.1 was released recently with a number of new features, including support for RPM and Debian package databases, console-based installs, new platforms, and much more.

If the FSF succeeds in blocking a landmark deal, the biggest losers will be software consumers, policy analyst James DeLong says.

Tim Bromhead, in a new entry over the bla.st blog, talks about writing neat and tidy URLs with PHP. He says, to do this you have to set up URL rewrites in Apache to send all page requests through a single PHP script. In this post he shows you, how to make the URLs with spaces easy to type for users.

So I got this machine, and decided to set it up as an Icecast server to play with...

Machine:
HP NetServer 4d/66 LM
486/66
128MB RAM
2 x AHA-2740 offboard SCSI controllers
1 x AIC-7770 onboard SCSI controller
2 x 9GB SCSI hdd
1 x SCSI CD-ROM
1 x Intel EtherExpress 16 offboard NIC

Read on for the adventure!

Digital Doorways, a joint project between the Department of Science and Technology and the Meraka Institute, will provide rural communities with access to the various open source projects in a bid to improve South Africa's computer literacy.

The following letter is shown verbatim, as received from ESR, who has sent it to a number of Linux-related publications and mailing lists.

Spammers beware! A new programme launched by the Internet Society of South Africa has placed bounties on the heads of spammers. Bounty hunters could receive as much as R30 000 for a spammer's conviction.

The last interviews have been published for the FOSDEM conference, which starts in just three days. The list of interviewees is impressive this time around, with Simon Phipps from Sun Microsystems, Jeremy Allison from Samba, Keith Packard from X.org, Miguel De Icaza (Mono/Novell), Paul Everitt (Plone and Zope), and Pete Herzog (Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual).

This short article describes how you can search for missing packages with apt-file on Debian and Ubuntu systems. apt-file allows you to search for a file name, and it gives back the name(s) of the package(s) containing that file so that you can install the appropriate package.

Mono has long tried to provide an open source alternative implementation of Microsoft's .Net framework. It has succeeded in some respects, and in others it has been lacking, especially when it come to Visual Basic. That is no longer the case. As of Mono version 1.2.3, the Novell led project now includes new Visual Basic capabilities allowing development and deployment of Visual Basic for Mono on Linux platforms. The 1.2.3 release is the third point release in the 1.2.x series which was first released in November of 2006.

Many new admin or Linux users get frustrated when their remote Linux box is not accessible dues to network connectivity. In this article I will try to provide tools and information about how to diagnose network configurations. You can try these tips/tools to diagnose an issue of Linux network connectivity to remote or local servers.

High-integrity software is key topic at 2007 Military Technologies Conference

A recent headline in my local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, attracted my attention: “Cuba moving to ditch Microsoft, its products” (see link). While many would tend to chalk this up to anti-US security paranoia, in my opinion this would be the wrong conclusion.

In collaboration with French design company Purple Labs, NXP has launched the Nexperia cellular system solution 7210 with Linux open-source OS for 3G handsets. With this new solution, manufacturers will be able to achieve time-to-market advantages with a high-level OS without the additional cost and complexity of integrating a dedicated application processor. Operators will also be able to provide a stable and powerful yet cost-effective platform for new connected services.

[Source says subscription, but I was able to see the article without one. - dcparris]

Using a combination of wireless and embedded Linux the tuXlabs school laboratory project is halfway to completing a 100 school wireless network in the Western Cape.

Unless you have been living under a rock in the media sense, surely by now you have heard the news of Cuba embracing open source and all that it has to offer. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream press is likely to once again point to open source and claim that it is anti-free enterprise, which could be a problem.

Dell has launched a new website where users can submit and vote on ideas for new products and product enhancements.

It’s a contentious time for the open-source community. Microsoft has partnered with Novell, Oracle is angling for Red Hat’s customer base, while Linux is promising to enlarge its influence in the burgeoning market for mobile phones and set-top boxes.

In a bit of nostalgia, I recently read the short story Why I Live at the P.O., by southern writer Eudora Welty. The humorous and quirky story led to the naming of one of my favorite pieces of software, an esteemed E-mail program, by its original developer back in the late 1980s. And the nostalgia was for the passing of Eudora, the software.

SimplyMEPIS 6.5 Beta 6 is now available for downloading and testing, the project announced today. The new release allows users to optionally select between two NVIDIA drivers, the latest v1.0.9746 or a legacy version (v1.0.9631), to maximize Beryl support for both newer and older chips, the project said.