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Like many of you, I occasionally come into possession of an older laptop. Usually, it’s something that used to run Windows XP, sometimes even older. You always hear that Linux is supposed to be so great for resurrecting old hardware, but many modern desktop distributions with all their bells and whistles end up chugging along just as slowly as Windows did. In those circumstances, you can either throw the machine away, or build your own custom install tailored toward the needs of the machine. Today we’re going to put together a Debian installation tailored specifically toward the needs of an older laptop.

As has recently been announced on the main kernel.org page, the main kernel.org server (known as “hera”) was recently compromised by an unknown intruder. This person was able to gain “root” access, meaning they had the full run of the system. Speaking as just one of many members of the kernel development community, I can say that this episode is disturbing and embarrassing. But I can also say that there is no need to worry about the integrity of the kernel source or of any other software hosted on the kernel.org systems.

Red Hat, the world’s leading Linux company, is asking its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) users to help set the features for its next release RHEL 7. Of course, Red Hat is based on open-source Linux, and, in particular it’s Fedora community Linux operating system. There, the developers call the shots. Now the company is seeking the active help of its RHEL users as well.

Have you ever logged in to a server, ran `free`, seen that a bit of swap is used and wondered what’s in there? It’s usually not very indicative of anything, or even overly helpful knowing what’s in there, mostly it’s a curiosity thing.

Earlier this month, a number of servers in the kernel.org infrastructure were compromised. We discovered this August 28th. While we currently believe that the source code repositories were unaffected, we are in the process of verifying this and taking steps to enhance security across the kernel.org infrastructure.

Sony is taking orders for a 9.4-inch, Android 3.1-based & Sony Tablet S& it will release next month, and says a folding, dual 5.5-inch display & Sony Tablet P& model (with Android 3.2) will follow later this year. Both models are equipped with 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processors, and the Sony Tablet S costs $499 with 16GB of storage or $599 with 32GB, according to the company....

For data sensitive enough to warrant encryption, a tool like TrueCrypt is a great solution. The app creates and encrypted file container of any size on your hard drive or on an external drive. Once mounted using a super-strong password of your own choosing, files can come and go as you please. Once dismounted, they're locked behind a virtually impenetrable wall of encryption.

Multiple servers used to maintain and distribute the Linux operating system were infected with malware that gained root access, modified system software, and logged passwords and transactions of the people who used them, the official Linux Kernel Organization has confirmed. The infection occurred no later than August 12 and wasn't detected for another 17 days, according to an email John "'Warthog9" Hawley, the chief administrator of kernel.org, sent to developers on Monday. It said a trojan was found on the personal machine of kernel developer H Peter Anvin and later on the kernel.org servers known as Hera and Odin1. A secure shell client used to remotely access servers was modified, and passwords and user interactions were logged during the compromise.

Finally, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled [PDF] on SCO's appeal of its loss to Novell in the second jury/bench trial. The appeals court affirms in all respects. So, SCO loses again, and likely this is as far as it will go. Technically, SCO can ask the US Supreme Court to hear a further appeal, but that is very unlikely to happen and even less likely to be granted were it to happen. SCO has fallen downstairs, hitting its head on every step, to the very bottom, just like I told you in May of 2003, in the first article I ever wrote about SCO.

Besides a 40-way graphics card comparison between the open and closed-source Linux drivers for both NVIDIA and ATI/AMD graphics processors, there's also a number of other interesting articles coming up on Phoronix. Here's some of what you can expect to see next month on Phoronix.

Did developers who started Mandrake project back in 1998 knew that their baby would become world famous operating system? But fate of this baby is not the easiest. It was renamed to Mandriva, remarketed, and finally split into at least two. I am talking about recent fork between Mandriva and Mageia.

On one hand, Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation is right in describing those who don't contribute back to Linux and FOSS as "idiots." On the other hand, how can Zemlin say that and then say that contributing back "doesn't matter?" Larry the Free Software Guy uses this dichotomy as a rallying point for a gut check: What are you doing for Linux and FOSS, and why (or why not)?

The IBM Software Development Kit for Linux on POWER (SDK) is a free, Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The SDK integrates C/C++ source development with the Advance Toolchain, Post-Link Optimization, and classic Linux performance analysis tools, including OProfile and Valgrind. The IBM SDK for Linux on POWER provides you with an all-in-one solution for developing software on Linux on POWER platforms. This demo shows you how to access the SDK using a technique called X-Forwarding, which allows you to integrate the SDK interface to an interface running on your Linux desktop.

it’s cute that I can write a quick email from the doctor’s office waiting room. But when I need to communicate above the level of Twitter or get work done beyond a quick SSH, I need a real computer

The Touchpad has been discontinued by HP when the company has changed its business strategy recently (getting rid of the whole PC business arm). A lot of people think that this was an absolutely unnecessary and sorely mistaken step, especially in light of the possible revival of the Touchpad after the PC business has been separated. Not that the Touchpad is a very competitive device in its current form. It has many glaring design mistakes by HP like missing ports (HDMI out, USB host), no expandable storage ...etc but it also has many good features like its high-quality IPS-screen, Beats audio system and over-clockable processor.

This article shows how you can install the PowerDNS nameserver (with MySQL backend) and the Poweradmin control panel for PowerDNS on a Debian Squeeze system. PowerDNS is a high-performance, authoritative-only nameserver - in the setup described here it will read the DNS records from a MySQL database (similar to MyDNS), although other backends such as PostgreSQL are supported as well. Poweradmin is a web-based control panel for PowerDNS.

In a recent article over at MyBroadband, Alastair Otter says that the end of the OS is nigh. I couldn't disagree more. His argument is that cloud applications along with browser innovations will replace our normal applications and operating systems. He argues that cross platform compatibility of those cloud applications will be the push. I see a few problems.

BeOS was one of those promising operating systems that never really managed to gain any kind of market share. The Haiku project has taken it upon themselves to continue the development of BeOS, and has slowly been making their way to a version 1.0 release.

If you want to see what all the fuss is about, the easiest way is to download a preconfigured VitrualBox disk Hiaku disk image from virtualboxes.org. This will save you the trouble of installing Hiaku for yourself, and in just 10 easy steps you can have a Haiku vitrual machines up and running.

The Android-x86 project is glad to announce a new test build 20110828 for public testing. This is a release candidate for android-x86 2.3 stable release. Live CD ISOs are available from Download page, as usual.

If you need more honey in your food, you aren’t the only one. Honeycomb came around in December and we had a lot of questions. This was the first OS that was especially made for Android tablets. Here are some things that I found out about Honeycomb.