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As Ubuntu continues to make its presence known throughout the world, it was only a matter of time before the project spawned an offshoot variation or two that would enable people with lower-spec machines to participate in all that Ubuntu goodness.

Episode 174 of The Linux Link Tech Show is now available for download:
OGG
MP3

We interview Jeremy Allison from Google and the Samba Project
Upgrading Trixbox
Dan gets use to the Gnome desktop
Apple product roundup
Upcoming Linux conventions

And much, much more

A thread on the lkml began with a query about using O_DIRECT when opening a file. An earlywhite paper written by Andrea Arcangeli [interview] to describe the O_DIRECT patch before it was merged into the 2.4 kernel explains,"with O_DIRECT the kernel will do DMA directly from/to the physical memory pointed [to] by the userspace buffer passed as [a] parameter to the read/write syscalls. So there will be no CPU and memory bandwidth spent in the copies between userspace memory and kernel cache, and there will be no CPU time spent in kernel in the management of the cache (like cache lookups, per-page locks etc..)."

PHP has become the most popular application language on the web, but common security mistakes by developers are giving PHP a bad name. Here's how PHP coding errors have become the new low-hanging fruit for attackers, contributing to the phishing problems on the web.

In a court filing reported this week by legal Web site Groklaw, Novell claimed that SCO should pay it almost all of the Unix licensing revenue it has received from Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. This revenue amounts to almost $26 million, and was earned by SCO when it sold Unix licenses to Sun and Microsoft in 2003.

If you want to share your knowledge and ideas with others, you set up a blog. If you want to collaboratively edit Web pages and keep track of changes, you use a wiki. If you need a tool that allows you to quickly set up a page that combines blog and wiki features, with some content versioning capabilities thrown in, you need something like EditThisPagePHP, a PHP script that allows you to create Web pages and do some clever things with them.

Apple's iPhone is undoubtedly beautiful and compelling, but it is wrapped in a cocoon of patents and proprietary software, writes Anthony Taylor. The very similar looking OpenMoko Neo phone, on the other hand is almost entirely open and free of proprietary components.

Most PC users have collections of .mp3 and .ogg files on their PC which is fine for MP3 players and PC listening. But what if you have a standalone CD player that doesn't play .mp3 files and you would like to make your own CD compilations? Here is a simple five step process to convert .mp3 and .ogg files and burn audio CDs that will play anywhere.

This tutorial shows how you can back up and restore hard drives and partitions with Ghost4Linux. Ghost4Linux is a Linux Live-CD that you insert into your computer; it contains hard disk and partition imaging and cloning tools similar to Norton Ghost. The created images are compressed and transferred to an FTP server instead of cloning locally.

Opera Software is calling accusations made by Mozilla staffer Asa Dotzler regarding Opera's security disclosure policies, "dangerous and irresponsible." The issue at hand revolves around a pair of security vulnerabilities that were recently discovered by Verisign's iDefense division. Dotzler alleged that since Opera did not immediately alert users that there was an update available to fix critical flaws that Opera was in some way negligent.

A software company in Lithuania is shipping face recognition and fingerprint recognition SDKs (software development kits) for embedded and mobile Linux devices. Neurotechnologija's FaceCell and FingerCell 2.0 SDKs can be used separately, or combined, for "multi-biometrical applications," the company says.

Enterprises will spend too much this year creating monolithic apps—the sort of server-side efforts that involve formal requirements and tie up dozens (or hundreds) of architects, coders, and testers. Most would be better off using scripting languages, Web services, and SOA (service-oriented architecture) to weave together browser-based apps that leverage existing assets.

The Sun Microsystems marketing machine has been hard at work promoting its Solaris 10 operating system as of late, with special events for the press and analyst community. But market data suggests that it's Linux -- not Solaris -- that Sun customers want.

Fork over $26m while you still can. SCO, whose claim to the Linux kernel has touched off a firestorm in open source realm, is on the verge of bankruptcy, according to court documents filed by legal opponent Novell, several publications reported.

Short comment - A few days back, I read the story "Dell's secret Linux fling". What surprised me is, the people at The Register didn't know this. To show how 'not so secret' this all is, please let me quote an interesting line from the Asianux site;

"As the base software of IT system, Asianux has gotten full support from many global partners including Adaptec, AMD, BEA, CA, Dell, EMC, Emulex, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, NEC, Oracle, Samsung Electronics, SAP, Stratus Technologies and Symantec just to name a few."

Very secret, huh? I wish it was easier to find out how Linux is doing in the east, but from experience I can say it's rather hard to find out, since sooner or later, you arrive at Chinese-only pages. However, we should still look at the pages that _are_ in English, since they present interesting information. It seems OEM's in the east are supporting Linux, in contrary to what they do in the Western world.

If there are any people from Asia reading this and willing to tell us, the LXer readers and editors, anything about the state of pre-installed Linux-offers in Asia, please let us know. We are eager to find out, and I can promise you I will write a (short) article about it.. Our e-mail address is at the last line of the 'About' page.

When Microsoft introduces its long-awaited Windows Vista operating system this month, it will have an unlikely partner to thank for making its flagship product safe and secure for millions of computer users across the world: the National Security Agency.

[This one is posted only as an example of the drawbacks of closed software - hkwint]

High performance interconnects used for Linux HPC clusters are often compared using artificial benchmarks. The important question is how well these artificial benchmarks translate into real-world performance. This article attempts to answer this question buy taking a look at the real-world performance for Mellanox for Qlogic Interconnects.

The Linux community is heading for a clash between three disparate groups with very different goals and agendas. We've already seen some light skirmishes between them already. Sometimes these groups will align for the purposes of advancing their own views, but for the most part, these three groups will either destroy Linux as we know it or have to learn how to get along.

In this article, you, learn how to use a finite state machine to design complex behavior for a simple Web widget -- an animated tooltip that fades into and out of view.

Open-source systems integrator Optaros Inc. today released a guide listing and reviewing what it considers the 262 best open-source applications for companies. The catalog, available on Optaros' Web site, rates software on a scale of 1 to 5 on factors such as functionality, the vibrancy of the developer community behind it, the software's maturity and stability, and its projected trajectory. Those factors are then used to calculate the software's readiness for use by midsize and large corporations.