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An easy, inexpensive way to double up Ethernet interfaces to get more more bandwidth and reliability is called Ethernet bonding. While Gigabit Ethernet is all exciting and the hot new fad, you can get a lot of mileage out of using Ethernet bonding to give your existing gear a nice boost without spending much extra money. Just stuff two ordinary 10/100 Ethernet interfaces into a machine, tweak a few configuration files, and you're in business. If one fails you won't lose connectivity. It is a good cheap upgrade for your servers—you'll have several options for configuring load balancing and failover, and with the right gear you'll get an instant bandwidth boost by combining the bandwidth of the two interfaces.

If you go by what the mainstream press reports, you’d think there were only two computer desktop operating systems in the world—Windows and Mac OS. This notion would be most unfortunate because it might keep you or your company from exploring Linux as a reliable, secure and powerful desktop operating system for your PC that’s cheaper than the two proprietary platforms. In fact, it’s often free. Today, more than a year after I switched, there’s very little I can’t do in terms of business and personal productivity on my Ubuntu Linux PC that I did when I used Windows.

Few major pieces of free software are more eagerly awaited than KDE 4. With changes to everything from the core libraries and window manager to the look, feel and function of the desktop, by any standard, KDE 4 is an extreme makeover of the popular desktop environment. Scheduled for release in October, KDE 4 can be toured now in the first beta that was released at the start of August. On the way, you'll find major overhauls of general functionality,as well as both major and minor refitting of familiar KDE programs and the introduction of a few new ones.

Software Freedom Day the worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), will take place on September 15. The South African event will take place at the department of science and technology (DST) in Pretoria.

The Free Software Foundation has defined Four Freedoms related to software. These freedoms apply to users of software, not necessarily developers. In the view of the FSF, these freedoms are ethical in nature, so much so that they argue that software which violates these freedoms is unethical.

Forty percent of German university students now have access to Linux and management solutions from Novell

My Series 1 TiVo is getting old, so I am planning an escape route based on MythTV, a free software system that turns an old computer into a personal video recorder. This week I tested three MythTV-specific Linux distributions: KnoppMyth, MythDora, and MythBuntu. I found MythDora the best overall fit for my needs -- but there are important distinctions between the three that may lead you to a different decision.

Seems that World Domination is not so far away. In Germany, ~ 80 million people are using Linux - even if they have never used a computer at all. And yes, that means: all of us are.

This document describes how to set up Hyperic HQ on Ubuntu 7.04. The resulting system provides an awesome, web-based "Systems-Management-Software". It is the next stage of classical monitoring and able to manage all kinds of operating systems, web servers, application servers and database servers.

My friend Dan Marshall once told me, "Evil will screw you over. Stupid will screw everybody over." In the name of "national security" in America, it is quite possible that Linux and FOSS could become illegal if Microsoft were to have its way...

An Interview with Kir Kolyshkin,Project Manager for OpenVZ.

Many in Health IT are moving to all over-the-web 'asp', software-as-service Electronic Medical Records services with total centralized control of data. John C. Dvoraksounds off a note of caution for such a trend with the recent Windows Genuine Advantage server outage which should be a wakeup call for those moving to 'online everything' applications:'What is often lost in individual analyses of how to proceed with your data-processing needs is the concept of"being at the mercy of a single company." It's something that you need to avoid at all costs. This Windows Genuine Disadvantage pothole should make all users rethink their strategies...' He further notes that this outage"happened to Microsoft, not to Alabama Joe's Server Farm and Toaster Repair." a note of caution indeed.

What happens when it comes to light that terrorists are using the Linux Operating System to conduct their business. Linux already has a black-hat, bad-boy image. Some of us have learned to create our own style of mis-teek with such misconceptions...it's what makes us feel elite. (like purposely mis-spelling a word just to be "special".) Well, it's just that sort of misconception that could find Linux on the opposite side of the law.

Continuing its efforts to connect with social activists, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has released an open letter signed by major environmental organizations. The letter urges activists to reject lockdown technologies in general and Windows Vista in particular as hostile to their ethics and the causes they support, and to support free software instead. The letter is only the first in a series that the FSF plans to release in the coming months, each of which will be crafted to make an ethical or pragmatic appeal to a specific group's concerns.

One of the fundamental principles of Linux kernel development is that user-space interfaces are set in stone. Once an API has been made available to user space, it must, for all practical purposes, be supported (without breaking applications) indefinitely. There have been times when this rule has been broken, but, even in the areas known for trouble (sysfs, for example), the number of times that the user-space API has been broken has remained relatively small.

With an avalanche of last-minute commits, the KOffice Google Summer of Code students finished yet another great Summer of Code. We had some very exciting projects this year, and most of them were as great a success as last year.

I guess I was a tad surprised that O'Reilly's "Mastering Perl" is a first edition. After all, Learning Perl is in it's fourth edition and was published over 2 years ago. I was also surprised (I guess I don't keep up) that O'Reilly had published the first edition of Intermediate Perl over a year ago. Usually for a particular programming language, O'Reilly publishes a "Learning" and a "Mastering" book. I know Perl is no cake walk, but does it really need this much attention? Also, why wait four editions into "Learning Perl" before publishing more advanced texts on this language?

Linux OEM companies can survive, even flourish. As far as I’m concerned, System76.com remains king here in the States. They've proven that a 'Linux only' approach is strong enough to stand on its own without needing to rely on Windows as a backup OS option to be pre-installed. Besides specializing in Linux-only systems, the best Linux OEMs go that extra mile in customer service, in addition to providing extra needed functionality. Especially when the distribution itself falls short in an area of hardware compatibility.

Opinion: Any company that has managed for more than a decade not only to survive within Microsoft's shadow but also to profit from it clearly knows how to run a business. For what I think will prove to be a cheap $500 million, XenSource has been picked up by Citrix Systems. So what, you ask? One of the truisms of the business is that nobody—and I mean nobody—partners with Microsoft and wins in the long run. There is, however, an exception to that rule: Citrix.

Projects like the Tux Project and the Radio Talkshow Blitz are vitally important projects when it comes to helping the Free Software movement grow. First, one might wonder why it is so important to spread Free Software and the ideals of user freedom. For one thing, we want more people to discover the practical benefits of software freedom.