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For a long time, there was nothing to talk about in web browsers. You used Internet Explorer, and that was it. Oh, to be sure, some Mozilla/Netscape holdouts clung to their ways, as did a smattering of users of Opera, Konqueror, and other obscurities. Internet Explorer itself hasn't had a major version change since the release of 6.0 in 2001, so there wasn't much to talk about there, either for five long years.

[Of the three browsers examined here, only Firefox is libre. - dcparris]

Struggling with more than one computer, and an overload of keyboards and mice? Try Synergy to tie it all together.

With the update to a 2.6.18-rc based kernel, Xen requires some more effort to get to working. Given that Xen is one of the big features for Fedora Core 6, trying to ship the second test release (and thus the feature freeze) without Xen seems like a less than ideal situation.

DistroWatch reports - The Dreamlinux Project Team announced version 2.0 of Dreamlinux, a Brazilian Linux distribution based on the XFce desktop: called WORKS and it brings the most known Linux apps for a production environment, like OpenOffice, Inkscape, Gimp, etc..., and the version 2.5 of MKDistro, tool for distros' building. This Dreamlinux version is the result of making use of various technologies that came from many different distros, like Kanotix, Elive, Morphix and Debian. OSDir has a nice selection of Dreamlinux screenshots in the Dreamlinux 2.0 Screenshot Tour.

Your ISP probably assigns your computer an IP address dynamically. It means one less thing for the both of you to think about, but it also puts you in a bind if you need to connect to your machine from the outside: you can't locate your PC amidst those of all the ISP's other customers. To overcome this obstacle, you can use dynamic DNS. Here's how to get started.

Read more about IBM's frozen chip advences and industry efforts to craft flexible circuits at room temperature, rumors of a Cell Broadband Engine-based supercomputer and other Cell BE- and console-related news, plus: good news for Cobol programmers, and for DAC attendees, there is such a thing as a free lunch.

This eKit contains demos, articles, webcasts and best practices for Rational performance and load testing, functional testing, test automation, manual testing, and runtime analysis. Its designed to improve your test efficiency and accuracy, validate performance and scalability, manage and control your test projects, improving code quality, and provide tips and techniques for successful testing.

A good system administrator is always looking for ways to make life a bit easier. The Levanta Intrepid M, a turnkey Linux management appliance, is one way to smooth out some of the rough edges of system deployment and make things run just a bit smoother in your IT environment. I spent some time using the Intrepid M appliance, and found it to be a well-designed product. Too bad the pricing makes it unsuitable for some IT budgets.

Linux leader Red Hat is aggressively pushing its Linux solutions into the telecom space with a series of new partner initiatives. One part of the push is Red Hat's partnership with IBM and HP which is intended to produce a hardware and software combination targeted at carrier-grade deployment. The other part is Red Hat's Telecommunications Partner Program, which is about driving both awareness and adoption of Red Hat-based carrier-grade solutions and platforms.

Today, just about any company can web-enable its business by having a static “billboard” web site on the Internet. As the business progresses, the static web site may then evolve to dynamic web sites with database-driven, interactive content. However, not every business has an adequate regard for the need for Internet security, even as they rush to create static or dynamic web sites.

In the last two years, Martin Michlmayr has gone from serving as Debian Project Leader to studying for a doctorate at the Centre for Technology Management, University of Cambridge. His dissertation, tentatively titled "Quality Improvement in Volunteer Free Software Projects: Exploring the Impact of Release Management," is sponsored by Google, Intel, and other companies with an interest in free software development.

Sauce for the gooseMalware authors are adopting open source development models to develop more potent threats. It's well known among security experts that botnet clients such as SDBot are written in a modular framework that allows hackers to add features that, for example, facilitate its spread through IM networks or add more potent attack features.…

If you're using Asterisk for your voice over IP needs, you'll need to lock down your Asterisk server, and that begins with secure passwords.

The open source network simulation tool ns-2 is an invaluable tool for researchers working on wired or wireless networks. I came across ns-2 while working on my thesis. I needed a network simulator, and since my college lacked the brand-name heavyweights, I had to look for an alternative that was free but could do the job. While ns-2 is free, it's also pretty unfriendly.

The Free Standards Group...today announced Linuxprinting.org, the de facto standard repository for printer drivers on Linux, is merging with the FSG's OpenPrinting workgroup and will be integrated and supported in the Linux Standard Base (LSB). The result will be easier and standardized printing functionality on Linux and an ease of support for Linux and printing vendors and makes the Free Standards Group the central organization for printing on Linux and open source Unix.

Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Harald Welte announces the availability of a root filesystem based on Debian sarge and a corresponding kernel plus instructions for EZX phones. Raphaël Hertzog has the impression that the Debian project is merely trying to keep packages up-to-date and that the project is not making any significant improvements.

Every sysadmin will try its best to secure the system/s he is managing. Hopefully you never had to restore your own system from a compromise and you will not have to do this in the future. Working on several projects to restore a compromised Linux system for various clients, I have developed a set of rules that others might find useful in similar situations.

Gov. Mike Easley has appointed Gary Jordan to the Wake Technical Community College Board of Trustees. Jordan is senior director of Global Learning Services at Red Hat. In this position, he manages technology training organizations in Europe, Asia, South America and the United States.

Klink Software has released dim3 v2.0, an update to its free open-source 3D game engine.

The license is a very simple non-copyleft, free software license.

A newly launched electronic theses deposit system, the Repository Bridge, allows theses produced at Welsh universities to be automatically and electronically added and stored at the National Library of Wales thanks to open source software.