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You need to run a job at midnight when system usage is low, or you need to run jobs daily or weekly, but you would rather be sleeping, or enjoying life in some other way. Other good reasons for scheduling jobs include letting routine tasks happen automatically, or ensuring tasks are handled the same way every time. This tip helps you use the cron and at capabilities to schedule jobs periodically or at a single future time.

When Microsoft announced the first of its patent interoperability agreements with Novell in November 2006, one of the major claims made in favor of the patent covenant agreement was that it would give customers peace of mind and ensure that they didn’t have to worry about issues such as intellectual property infringement. Eight months, several further patent deals, and a new version of the GNU General Public License later, and the promise of simplification for customers is a hollow one. In fact, Microsoft’s patent covenants have arguably made things more complicated for Novell, Linspire, and Xandros Linux users.

The problem with the tech media (conventional media and tech blogosphere) is that they are way too deep into proprietary software and hit based economic models. This has resulted in way too many misinterpretations about open source. I am writing this post today because I saw another article based on the misunderstanding of the term open source. Alexander Wolfe, of the Information Week, makes a claim that too many Linux distributions are responsible for the open source mess. Lemme state here at the outset. There is no mess in the open source world. It resides only in the imagination of the media which couldn’t grasp the open source approach at all.

James Bottomley is really on top of things (sorry -- we had to say it) when it comes to Linux. The CTO of SteelEye Technology is also on the board of the Linux Foundation. In that capacity, he helps smooth the transition of disparate Linux organizations into the still fairly new Foundation. As such, Bottomley's obviously got some insight into Microsoft's continued patent deals with Linux distributors. He said Redmond would have to "sue its customers" to pursue its contention that Linux infringes on Microsoft's patents -- an unlikely scenario.

The Nintendo DS is an excellent gaming device, but that's not all you can do with it. The machine's"hackability" makes the Nintendo DS a great platform for running open source software and even Linux, if you want to run a slimmed down version of Linux. In fact, several nifty open source applications can turn your Nintendo DS into a rather useful all-around computing device. DSOrganize is, despite it's name, is not just an organizer, it's an application suite including nine useful tools. And to run Linux, you can use the aptly named DSLinux.

If you are suffering a mouth breathing moment like I did today, happen to be using Ubuntu Edgy and found that after an update, that your GUI has suddenly left the building - don’t panic. Just try this...

A few months ago I was in Chicago to take the Redhat Certified Engineer exam. One of the nights I was there (5 day course) my brother calls me in a panic begging me to come fix his computer. I of course tell him that I’m in Chicago at the moment and not sure what I can do to help. At that I can hear his heart sink, so I ask him what the problem is. He starts into this sob story about how he has a paper due in the morning but he can’t get logged into his computer. Apparently his wife dropped something on the keyboard and the number row no longer works, which limits him from logging into his machine. He is, by my suggestion, using Ubuntu on his home machine so I know I can save the day.

Compulab has introduced a fanless PC, roughly the size of a paperback book, that consumes a mere 3 to 5 watts of power. The "fit-PC" comes with Linux preinstalled, and is intended to fit where conventional PCs won't, according to the Haifa, Israel-based company. he module has a 500 MHz AMD Geode LX800 processor, and is equipped with 256 MB of DDR RAM and up to 512 MB of NAND flash.

PCLinuxOS (PCLOS) is one of many GNU/Linux systems belonging to the family of Desktop distributions. Its aim is to be a friendly and simple to use operating system. It was forked from Mandrake Linux (Mandriva at present) in 2003. It’s now a fully independent distro, although it does take advantage of a few of Mandriva’s technologies.

It appears that the Gentoo Foundation may be disappearing in a matter of time. Apparently, no one has time to actually do the work required to run the Foundation. There seems to be some momentum building behind the idea of handing over all of Gentoo's intellectual property to another Foundation, so no one has to deal with running the Gentoo Foundation anymore.

As my week progresses, I'm seeing entirely too many utopia articles, such as this one. And while much of the article is spot on, especially with those who would rather play in traffic that use Vista, the problem of wireless Internet connectivity and popular media codecs very much remains in disarray.

Earlier this week, just less than a couple of months after their seemingly-friendly deal, Microsoft betrayed Linspire. There are more questions to be raised and implications to discuss. Microsoft has disavowed any GPLv3-licensed software. Ubuntu will be moving toward the new toolchain, which is GPLv3-licensed. Linspire needs Ubuntu, which is the core on which it builds its products. If Linspire carries on adopting Ubuntu as its codebase or even falls back (some would say “forward”) to Debian, any “patent indemnification” will then be rendered moot.

Before everyone goes to arms over the title, consider this: Linux options are much more than just the desktop environment. Linux remains largely entrenched in the server realm, along with substantial growth in the mobile markets as well. The big question that remains is why we are seeing this? Over the past few months, I have seen ample speculation bouncing back and forth as to where the attraction is with other projects, and after some searching, it appears that the answer is not what you might think.

The Thimbleberry Inn's executive chef, Guillaume Portes, was sensational. He took the modest kitchen of this even more modest inn, and using local produce and game, and with a flair for the dramatic, created a menu that drew local, regional and even national attention, in ever widening spirals of epicurean and gastronomic success. Now, fresh back from a guest appearance on a cable cooking show, Guillaume received a call from a publisher, asking if he would be interested in writing a cookbook: "Everyone loves your food. You're a genius. If you write a cookbook we could sell millions."

[An allegory for your amusement—Sander]

Last month, Novell decided to push the limits of developer empowerment and perform an elaborate experiment in innovation by liberating the company's entire Linux engineering team for one full week of free hacking. To gain an inside understanding of Hack Week, we spoke with several Novell developers who shared their experiences and provided fascinating details about their unique projects. We also had an opportunity to discuss Hack Week with Novell's chief open-source strategy officer, Nat Friedman, who served as worldwide MC for the event.

For sometime there, I generally figured that once the next revision of the GPL came about, all of these deals that are being made with Microsoft will eventually be put to bed. I was also delighted to see Mandriva standing against the alleged patent violations that Microsoft brought up time and again. They clearly state that they, like other Linux distributors, are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But this kind of backbone becomes a moot point when other companies are all but lining up to gain Microsoft's blessing.

Ooma's guiding principal is that in order for people to finally embrace VoIP, it has to use the existing phones in the house (not PCs, mics and headphones), it has to offer cooler features than plain old phone service, and above all, calls have to be free. Ooma hopes to make its money by selling a $400 Linux-based gateway device (shown below) that plugs into the customer's broadband connection and existing land line connection. For calls to non-users, VOIP services like Vonage typically must rely on the land line networks of other operators and that costs money--goodbye free calls. Ooma says it's found away around that problem.

Most people in the free software world know two things aboutApache. The first is that its name derives from the fact that it was a“a patchy server”, built out of patches to the earlier NCSAHTTPd Web server. The other is that in terms of market share, Apache knocks Microsoft'sIIS into a cocked hat. Unfortunately, neither of these statements is true.

One of the best things that has happened to Linux enthusisasts the world over is the confluence of two big players one in the Linux arena (Ubuntu aka Canonical) and the other in the PC hardware space (Dell). And the end users have already started reaping the benefits. Dell has released device drivers for the conexant internal modems (a.k.a. winmodems) for their E1505n and 1420n machines.

This document describes how to set up OpenLDAP on Fedora 7. OpenLDAP is a directory server based on the LDAP protocol, that same protocol MS Active Directory is based on. OpenLDAP is an open-source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.