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Performance testing is usually left for last in the application development cycle -- not because it's unimportant, but because it's hard to test effectively with so many unknown variables. In this month's In pursuit of code quality, Andrew Glover makes the case for performance testing as part of the development cycle and shows you two easy ways to do it.

Welcome to our issue number 71 of Fedora Weekly News. http://fedoranews.org/wiki/Fedora_Weekly_News_Issue_71 In this issue, we have following articles: 1 RPM -- plans, goals, etc. 2 Important Fixes in flash-plugin-7.0.69-2 3 Firefox Flicks on TV 4 Southern California Linux Expo ramps up registration 5 Fedora's Legacy Wanes 6 OpenOffice.org 2.1 Is Here 7 Fedora Weekly Reports 2006-12-11 8 Fedora Core 5 and 6 Updates 9 Contributing to Fedora Weekly News 10 Editor's Blog

While the process of creating a portable computing environment (a fancy term for a set of portable applications on a USB stick) is not particularly complicated, it does require some manual work, and the final result may not be as polished as you might like. The new PortableApps Suite from John T. Haller, who also brought us Firefox Portable, Thunderbird Portable, and OpenOffice.org Portable, is designed to solve these problems, making it dead easy to turn your USB stick into a portable application platform and add a couple of useful features for good measure.

New Version 6.0 Now Available for Both Windows & Linux

[Non-FOSS - Be careful how much of your freedom you sell off. - dcparris]

Managing hundreds or thousands of servers and desktops is a daunting job. System and network administrators need to be able to quickly load new machines, install applications, coordinate backups, balance network loads, and troubleshoot outages. They are constantly under assault by viruses, cyber criminals, and their own budgets. Rob Reilly examines one possible solution in NetIQ.

[I don't think NetIQ is FOSS... - dcparris]

This article takes you step-by-step through several good, but too often neglected, techniques for command-line operations.

Many small businesses have avoided Linux for a variety of reasons: not enough applications, complexity of installation or that it requires too much technical know-how to run. The technology has matured over many years, which raises the question: how valid are these considerations today?

NEW YORK — Mozilla's Firefox Web browser edged up slightly in usage at the expense of Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Internet Explorer, commanding nearly 11 percent of the U.S. market on a typical weekday, according to research by WebSideStory.

Intalio, the Open Source BPMS Company, has announced that Intalio BPMS Community Edition will be released under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) amended with the Generic Attribution Provision submitted to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) earlier this year.

[I thought the advantage of Free/Open Source Software was that you do not wind up with a stripped-down version of a program.

Avatars show where the work isIBM hascut a deal with US electronic gizmo retailer Circuit City Stores to build a virtual store on one of the private fiefdoms it occupies on Second Life. There, virtual visitors will, in the form of their on-screen avatar, be able to go down the aisles of the store and examine products. The products can then be or ordered via the website.

[I don't know much about second Life, but what happens if your avatar gets robbed while ordering? - dcparris]

LXer Feature: 18-Dec-2006

After getting a nudge from one of our DebCentral readers, I decided to give Debian another shot. You see, I haven't messed with Debian since Woody taught me I was just a wannabe geek. As for Etch, if you've installed *Ubuntu, you can install Debian Etch. In fact, Debian may have found a new home or two or three.

In general, you are not allowed to discriminate against the physically disabled in the workplace. When one thinks of a job in software development, however, one conjures up the image of programmers building applications or writing code in front of a computer screen - tasks apparently relying on good vision.

Linux is better at locking down a computer than Windows. The Linux OS uses configuration settings and user permissions to a much more efficient degree than the Windows administrator account. To do this, non-enterprise users should seek help from third-party security suites that serve as configuration managers, James Bottomley, chief technology officer of SteelEye Technology said.

Welcome to this year's final issue of DistroWatch Weekly! With the year 2006 closing down on us rapidly, this seems like a good time to take a look at the world of Linux distributions and their evolution during the past year. Who has done the best job of bringing Linux to the desktops of new users? And which distributions are the losers of the increased competition among the different projects, all vying for our attention? As always, opinions are likely to vary, but some trends aren't difficult to spot. In the news section: Fedora looks to regain control over the RPM Package Manager, KNOPPIX promises a new version of its live CD, Debian publishes a release update, and Arch Linux announces an easy-to-install CD for desktop users. Finally, warm wishes of a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year to all DistroWatch readers! See you again in 2007!

Organisations preparing to move to virtual environments will find broader options in 2007 as competitors to market leader VMware emerge with enhanced, enterprise-ready offerings.

Lots of companies sell Linux servers, but how many promise 99.999% uptime? Not very many, but Stratus Technologies sells systems that offer the kind of fault tolerance that will handle mission-critical applications and leave admins with peace of mind. I had a chance to test out one of the company's ftServer 4300 systems, and it's an impressive system.

“What we need is a Web browser that doesn’t just serve up documents, but serves up applications.” Early in 2006 I was given a design brief: a UK-based shipping company wanted to replace its shipment tracking system with a Web-based solution.

This article takes a look at two programs which can be effectively used to detect any rootkits that are installed on your machine. The programs conducts a number of tests and checks against a database of known rootkits to see if the machine is infected by any of them.

I am very please to announce the release of Foresight Linux 0.9.9. What is new in this release? Compiz is now included. Also included GnuCash, GnomeScan, and the synaptics driver.

NetBeans Community offers Developers Tools Designed to Fuel the Build Out of Next Generation Web Applications and Integrated Support For Building Native Applications