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Columnist Eric A. Hall was looking for a Linux distro that combines stability with the capabilities needed to test bleeding-edge technology. After a long search, he found that openSUSE 10.2 was up to the job.

The ImageMagick (IM) suite of command-line graphics tools is a free software staple; Linux, other Unix-like operating systems, and proprietary OSes like Windows have supported IM for close to two decades. But there is also an alternative tool called GraphicsMagick (GM) that covers much of the same functionality. How do you know which one is right for you?

LinuxQuestions.org has just launched the voting for its 2006 Members' Choice Awards. The awards enable Linux community members to select their favorite products of the year in 21 categories, including distribution, browser, office suite, desktop environment, and database, a spokesman for the website said.

Discover how to use shell scripts to mechanize virtually any UNIX personal or system task, and learn more command-line tricks while doing so. Scripts can monitor, archive, update, report, upload, and download. Indeed, no job is too small or too great for a script.

The code for the Falcon Storage Engine for MySQL has been released as open source. Jim Starkey, known as the father of Interbase, is behind its creation; previously he was involved with the Firebird SQL database project. Falcon looks to be the long-awaited open source storage engine that may become the primary choice for MySQL, and along the way offer some innovation and performance improvements over current alternatives.

Firefox and Google have enjoyed a quaint partnership as of late. The search engine giant has helped sponsor the development of the increasingly popular web browser, and in return Firefox has embedded Google as the default search engine and start page in the application.

Distro founder and chief maintainer Barry Kauler on Tuesday announced the release of Puppy Linux 2.13, featuring a 2.6.18 kernel and the GNOME desktop environment. The build also includes "the complete suite of kernel drivers," according to Kauler.

Het programma sendmail is een open source mta, ook wel mailserver genoemd, voor Unix en Linux systemen. Sendmail laat zich haast naar alle wensen van de beheerder aanpassen en heeft standaard ondersteuning aan boord voor smtp, esmtp, DECnet's mail11, HylaFax, QuickPage, UUCP en milters. De ontwikkelaars hebben aan het begin van dit jaar de vierde bètaversie van 8.14.0 uitgebracht en voorzien van de volgende aankondiging:~

Last week, Ilooked back at Ruby in 2006. This week, it's time to look ahead. Here are 10 Ruby things I think are going to be hot in 2007:

SabayonLinux 3.25 has been released, now with the latest X.Org 7.2, the new Kernel Virtual Machine, Beryl 0.1.4 and other enhancements. From the changelog: "Linux kernel 2.6.19.1; the first live implementation of the new Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) supporting both Intel and AMD architectures; X.Org 7.2 RC3 with better LCD/CRT display detection, improved Intel graphics cards support and more stable ATI open source drivers; new NetworkManager stack that supports many wireless cards; Beryl 0.1.4 with a nearly perfect OpenGL auto-detection and configuration; NVIDIA drivers 1.0-9631 and latest ATI drivers; new Kicker menu picture and better default cursors...." - DistroWatch. Screenshots of SabayonLinux 3.25 are available at LinuxQuestions.org.

Every programmer loves to optimize, even when we know we shouldn't.

Right now I think that the GNU/Linux kitchen has everything we need to cook some delicious FLOSS meals, we have projects, documentation & source code everywhere, people who to try to offer us freedom, protection and their money; people with creativity, people with enthusiasm, and ever growing & vibrant community

Skrenta explains what many of you already grasped about Google's growing power.

The Free Ryzom campaign failed to acquire the rights to the Ryzom Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG), but is refocusing its efforts on developing or acquiring another game. However, what strategy a new campaign will take and what support it will be able to attract remains unclear.

The open souce arena is forming a rather formidable fan following. In the beginning this was a small community known onl to a niche audience but today we see a different pisture. Commercial software and the the open source software seem to be at the same footing.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- DSP Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: DSPG), a worldwide leader in developing and providing chip-set solutions for residential wireless connectivity, announced today the availability of its new product demonstrations at the upcoming Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas. -- WiFi multimedia enabled dual band 802.11a/b/g solution supporting the following functionalities: Voice over WiFi, Music streaming and Photo sharing from Home Entertainment Center according to DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard, Instant Messaging (support for Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo!, ICQ, and GoogleTalk) as well as Internet Radio streaming. All of these features are running under Linux OS, with advanced MMI applications.

A few hours before the new year, Linus Torvalds released the 2.6.20-rc3 Linux kernel,"in order to not get in trouble with MADR ("Mothers Against Drunk Releases") I decided to cut the 2.6.20-rc3 release early rather than wait for midnight, because it's bound to be new years _somewhere_ out there. So here's to a happy 2007 for everybody." In good humor, he noted that the new kernel would be available on all the kernel.org mirrors by the time everyone's New Years celebrations had concluded,"it's probably going to be up-to-date by the time the hangovers are mostly gone. At which point the first thing on any self-respecting geek's mind should obviously be:'is there a new kernel release for me to try?'" Regarding the changes in the new release candidate, which include a data corruption fix [story], Linus summarized:"The big thing at least for me personally is that nasty shared mmap corruption fix, but there's a number of other changes in here, many of them just documentation (and some media and network drivers). Shortlog and diffstat appended."read more

"The final release of version 2.13 has been uploaded. This build has the complete suite of kernel drivers. More compact builds with a subset of the full driver suite and different selections of applications will follow soon." From the release notes: "NdisWrapper upgraded to v1.33, which fixes the problem; Soxgui, a great little front-end for SoX and FFmpeg, which can perform various operations on audio files, including file format conversion; Geany text editor upgraded to v0.10; Isomaster ISO file editor tool upgraded to v0.6; SeaMonkey upgraded to v1.0.6...." - DistroWatch. Screenshots of Puppy Linux 2.13 are available at LinuxQuestions.org.

Dunc-Tank, the unofficial organization set up to fund selected Debian activities, has made its first experimental payment to release managers, but community members are still debating whether a missed deadline and the alleged demotivation of some programmers make the experiment a failure.

Firefox fans will be facing 2007 with more tranquillity than they did 2006. A year ago, it was clear that Firefox's free ride was about to end: after an astonishing five years of inactivity, Microsoft was finally launching an updated version of Internet Explorer. There seems little doubt that much of Firefox's success is down to the fact that Internet Explorer was so bad, both in terms of the eternal round of security problems and its general technical tiredness (half a decade is a very long time in computing.)