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The Open Source Development Labs is touting recent advances that make Linux more "serviceable." The organization says its member companies worked with the open source community to improve kernel dump (kdump) and System Tap (stap), two utilities that aim to help administrators debug production Linux systems without taking them offline.

MySQL quietly deprecated support for most Linux distributions on October 16, when its 'MySQL Network' support plan was replaced by 'MySQL Enterprise.' MySQL now supports only two Linux distributions - Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. We learned of this when MySQL declined to sell us support for some new Debian-based servers. Our sales rep 'found out from engineering that the current Enterprise offering is no longer supported on Debian OS.' We were told that 'Generic Linux' in MySQL's list of supported platforms means 'generic versions of the implementations listed above'; not support for Linux in general.

There is more to free software applications than meets the eye. John Buyers looks at the legal risks of open source software

[Too many to quote..very funny. - Scott]

The Taiwan-based PUD GNU/Linux project earlier this week released a new version of its Ubuntu-based mini-distribution. The live CD distro is based on a 2.6.15 kernel along with an LXDE desktop environment, rather than the more popular but resource-hungry GNOME or KDE environments, according to project team member Chen Pin-shiun.

The classpath is one of the most complex and infuriating parts of the Java platform, but mastering it is essential to becoming a professional Java programmer.

The role of the operating system is changing, says Billy Marshall, the CEO of Raleigh, N.C.-based rPath, whose rBuilder product is used by software vendors to create and maintain software appliances.

Ease your system administration tasks by taking advantage of key parts of the Bourne-again shell (bash) and its features.

With the likes of AJAX coming to the fore in Java-based Web 2.0-oriented enterprise applications there is little surprise in companies like JBoss revamping development tools to match the changes. That’s OK then, for this is exactly what the company has done with the Seam application framework.

Earlier articles in this series provided an overview of the Atom Publishing Protocol and described the various ways it is being utilized in real world applications. This article demonstrates how you can start to implement Atom-enabled applications using Abdera, a new open-source project currently under incubation at the Apache Software Foundation.

Video download tools have been available since people have been uploading videos. Linux.com's CLI Magic column recently featured the Python script youtube-dl, which lets you download videos from YouTube using the command line. If instead you want the power of a Web-based application that can download from some of the major download sites at the touch of a button, get yourself the All-In-One Video bookmarklet.

This article provides a step-by-step procedure for migrating Microsoft Visual Studio C/C++ (MSVC) projects to Eclipse. Along the way, we compare and contrast the benefits of using MSVC and Eclipse CDT.

In theory, free and open source software (FOSS) should have a direct appeal to those concerned with ethics and social issues. Yet, in practice, it rarely does. Although the FOSS and activist communities frequently share ethical positions and social interests ranging from freedom of expression and cooperative organization to consumer rights, privacy, and anti-trust legislation, mostly the two groups remain unaware of each other. Why? Those comfortable in both the FOSS and activist arenas see several problems that must be overcome before activists can accept FOSS. These problems include the FOSS community's insularity, its failure to deliver the right message to the activists' technophobia, and a failure to make connections. In the end, it may be only by seeing the values that underlie both FOSS and other causes that any connection can be made

Opinion: "Pure Debian" is great for a simple home LAN server application, but as a Linux desktop it's far inferior to spinoffs such as Ubuntu and Freespire.

Telemarketing calls: we hate them. But the business of calling people at inopportune moments is big business; the so-called outbound dialing market will reach over $200 million by 2011, Frost & Sullivan predicts.

Linux kernel contributors including the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) today unveiled serviceability improvements including new kdump and SystemTap features.

The developers of Atomix, a Serbian Linux distribution based on Fedora Core and enhanced with multimedia applications, introduced Version 4 of their live DVD on Dec. 9. This is a major update that uses a 2.6.18.2 Linux kernel and KDE 3.5.5 as its default desktop environment, the team said.

syslog-ng is an alternative system logging tool, a replacement for the standard Unix syslogd system-event logging application. Featuring reliable logging to remote servers via the TCP network protocol, availability on many platforms and architectures, and high-level message filtering capabilities, syslog-ng is part of several Linux distributions. We discussed the highlights of last month's version 2.0 release with the developer, Balázs Scheidler.

It's not that long since Firefox 2 appeared, but the Mozilla Foundation is already hard at work on Firefox 3. The first alpha release of Firefox 3, code name "Gran Paradiso," is already out.

Edgy Eft (version 6.10), the second release of Xubuntu, a variant of Ubuntu Linux built around the Xfce4 desktop and designed to be lightweight, was released in October. I’ve been using it since then and I’ve been impressed. The bugs and rough edges seen in the first release, Dapper Drake (6.06) are gone and the end result is a solid, reliable distribution that’s a pleasure to use.

If you're new to Linux programming, then you might be interested in considering these aspects before you start your wonderful journey. Especially if you've programmed in Windows, you might want to change some of your ideas, so that you minimize the “culture” shock you experience when you encounter completely different ideas and ways of thinking. Here are some of my tips, based on common questions asked in forums about Linux programming especially from experienced Windows programmers.