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Ubuntu can be configured and managed from the desktop for the most part but occasionally, you may still have to open a terminal session to get some work done.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: kdesu, the KDE application privileges manager, gets long-awaited support for the sudo method. Strigi gets .rpm and .deb package contents indexing capabilities, and can now index UTF-8 encoded text. Guidance gets a new power manager applet. Code import for the Physiks educational Summer Of Code project. Amarok gets support for MTP media devices. Work starts on porting KGoldRunner to KDE 4. Rewrites begin in the KReversi game and Oskar media player. GUI optimisations in KTorrent and KTU (KDE Translation Updater). Experiments using Kexi as a database backend in KPhotoAlbum, and rendering SVG in Unity.

As neither human nor computers are perfect (humans err / computers may fail) it is quite obvious that a good backup system will prevent too much damage once the computer may go down. This could be either because the harddrive is failing, because of hackers, because you accidentally deleted something important, ...

Tech news and discussions website, Neowin.net, has started developing it’s own distribution of Linux, titled Shift, which has just reached version 0.3. Shift is not being built entirely from scratch, but is instead a derivative of another linux distribution called Morphix.

One of the characteristic features of any Linux distribution is its official software management system. Just as RPM to some degree defined Red Hat Linux throughout much of its history so too has the DEB package format helped to define the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. Explore the benefits of the Advanced Package Tool (APT) package manager for the Debian Linux distribution.

[A nice review of Debian and information on how APT works - Scott]

Dr. Tomislav Svoboda spends a lot of time working to improve the plight of the homeless in Toronto. He began his residency by working at the Seaton House, Canada's largest homeless shelter, which cares for about 700 men. Svoboda and Seaton House director Art Manuel are transforming the way the homeless receive services in this city. In their quest to provide the best care possible and to fulfill their vision to end the problem of homelessness in Toronto, Svoboda and Manuel aren't afraid to challenge paradigms by using non-traditional tools, like a small glass of wine and a full-blown open source development project.

The developers at Opened Hand have released a pair of lightweight, low-resource applications for calendaring and address book management. They were designed to run on small embedded systems such as Nokia's 770 Internet Tablet and the Sharp Zaurus -- but that doesn't mean you can't use them on your desktop Linux box just as easily.

Today, as everybody kicks up their heels at the offices of PC manufacturers worldwide celebrating the 25th anniversary of the desktop computer known as the IBM PC, one wonders what Steve Jobs and the crew over at Apple Computer must be thinking.

The driver source code released for the Intel 965 Graphics chipset recently isn't as open as first thought. Keith Packard posted a reply on the linux-kernel mailing list detailing what parts were not available.

If you want to try KToon quickly and without dealing with library dependencies, then you should try our LiveCD. You just have to download the iso image, burn it, and then boot your machine from cdrom.

This tutorial will show you how to set up the free web server security scanner tool, Nikto. This tool will probe your Apache set-up for vulnerabilities, so you can get an idea of what holes may exist in your configuration. This tutorial will get you so far as installing the tool, and running your first scan.

The Agency of French-speaking Universities (AUF), representing 616 French-speaking higher education institutions globally, the Linux Professional Institute (LPI), and Canonical Ltd have announced the world's first Ubuntu certification in French.

Why should you market your free and open source software (FOSS) project? After all, your project isn't selling anything. Besides, programmers notoriously don't get along with marketers. Yet a little marketing makes sense for many projects. Listing your project on Freshmeat and SourceForge.net is a good start, but greater efforts let users and organizations know that your code is available, so that they can start using it.

What exactly is meant by document portability? Does it mean that a document created in one application can be viewed using a different application on another operating system? Does it mean that the document can be viewed and edited within another application on the same or another OS platform? Or does it simply mean that you can be sure that the document you create today can be read in the future using proprietary products from the same software vendor?

Annapolis, Md.-based Zenoss provides an integrated application that has the ability to monitor an organization's entire IT infrastructure, including network devices, servers, applications and environmental controls. The firm offers its solution as an entirely free, downloadable product.

I was sitting on an uncomfortably high plastic chair waiting... waiting... waiting... and that was just for the office suite to load on MS2000.

Paula Hunter is an industry veteran who has an extensive background in Linux and open source. She was tapped in May of this year to lead the U.S. marketing efforts for Collax (www.collax.com), a Linux distribution aimed at addressing the needs of the small and medium business. Collax is set to expand on their European success in the U.S. this summer offering a solution that could rival more traditional offerings like Microsoft Small Business Server.

Linspire founder and entrepreneur extraordinaire Michael Robertson is at it again. No stranger to PR stunts, he's scooped out a big one this time. In the latest installment of his blog Michael's Minute, Robertson begs embattled Tour de France winner Floyd Landis to prove he's not a "cheater" by taking a polygraph test stating he did not take banned medication leading up to and during the Tour. To sweeten the pot, Robertson offers to pay Landis $100,000.

[Here is a Yum configuration for all you Fedora Core 4 lovers. - Scott]