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Security while surfing on the net is important, with firefox you can get more security by using security and privacy addons, here is a list of 10 security and privacy addons.

First of all, I don't run Compiz because I see it as no more than a resource-wasting annoyance. Sure, it looks cool, but it doesn't help me with productivity in any way. Secondly, I keep multiple windows open at all times, so I rarely see my desktop and it was good to see that GNOME shell includes a window switcher which can be accessed with the traditional Alt+Tab hotkeys. Finally, my system isn't a high-end system. I build my computers because it allows me to pick and choose hardware that I already know works with GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux, if you know what you're doing, doesn't need the latest and greatest hardware.

I previously reviewed the 2nd edition of this book, so I was interested in what was changed and/or added in its current incarnation. Of course, the release of Firefox 3 and IE 8 are enough to warrant an updating of "tips and tricks" relative to CSS and web design, but was there more? The back cover blurb didn't indicate such, but I looked further.

Ubuntu Artwork team finally starts delivering.Though a number of high quality third party themes are available for Ubuntu like the bisigi-project, one thing where Ubuntu really lacked was the absence of good quality themes by default. That is all going to change now.

Google is unlocking its data door by launching a new initiative called Data Liberation, an approach to engineering that allows users to move their data - be it pictures, mail or documents - from Google’s servers to any other location.

Running a Web-based task manager on your own server makes a lot of sense, but what application should you choose? If you are looking for a lightweight, user-friendly task management tool, you might want to give myTinyTodo a try.

The other day the beta 2 disks were released to the testers team. Thanks to the wonderful feedback by the testers for beta 1, we were able to get a lot of things fixed. Fabio is back from his vacation and so it took him a bit to get through all the emails. There is still a few known issues and will hopefully get addressed in 5.0 RC1. We plan to move quickly with beta 2 to RC1 and hopefully than we will get a Final 5.0 in two weeks. No date for release set yet, but keep your eyes out for it in couple weeks. Beta two brought us kernel 2.6.31 and drivers, we also hit a delay due to the libxcb upgrade. This made for a lot of packages to be rebuilt. We’ve also updated the packages to latest in repo 5.

Last December we had looked at the Ubuntu 9.04 home encryption performance after this feature appeared in a development snapshot as an alternative to those looking for security some of their data but are not looking for completely encrypting the hard drive due to the performance impact or other reasons. The home encryption feature ended up being disabled in Ubuntu 9.04 unless a special boot parameter was used, but it has now reappeared in Ubuntu 9.10.

We've covered mind-mapping software at OStatic before, and here's another open source option to add to the list. Freeplane is a new mind mapping application forked from FreeMind and already sports some features that the project it's based on doesn't.

A few weeks ago, I switched my development environment from Windows to Linux, on a project which was developed so far on Windows only. In this post, I want to describe the issues that brought me to this switch, a short overview how I did the actual port, and some observations on Linux for developers. This is the first post in a series of at least two, the second post will describe the tools I use on Linux right now.

The KOffice team today announced the second beta of the upcoming 2.1 release. The KOffice community has now switched from adding new features to only fix the remaining bugs, and that is obvious from this release. The first beta of 2.1 was released without any fanfares, but it marked the transition into the bugfixing stage. We now think it's time to let the users start to participate in the process. You can see the progress in the full changelog.

When I began collecting links for the Linux Sound & Music Applications pages I frequented a variety of announcement and news services. Some of those services are no longer with us, some have been superceded by more comprehensive and modern channels, and a few have remained as primary sources for new and updated Linux audio software. SourceForge is one of those long-lived services that have remained relevant to my searches for new and interesting sound and music applications, so I decided to surf the Forge to find recent and maybe some not-so-recent developments in the world of Linux audio. read more

GNOME is a desktop environment and an international project that includes creating software development frameworks, selecting application software for the desktop, and working on the programs which manage application launching, file handling, and window and task management.

While trademarks are often lumped together with copyrights and patents—under the poorly termed "intellectual property" umbrella—trademarks are quite different. One of those differences is that a trademark must be actively enforced, at least under US law, or the mark holder risks losing it. The Fedora community is currently discussing a license to allow community members to use the Fedora trademarks, while still protecting Red Hat's ability to defend the mark against those who would misuse it. But, requiring a signed license agreement in order for a community web site to use Fedora trademarks—on the site or in the domain name—seems heavy-handed to some.

"For us to be able to drive the price points in this market space and the complexity down, these are not IOS-based products," Mark Monday, Cisco's vice president and general manager of small business solutions, told InternetNews.com. "It is a Linux underlying operating system."

The official mythology of FOSS states that it is a meritocracy, and that only the code matters. The reality is not nearly so happy. On September 19th, the GNOME Foundation and the Free Software Foundation will host a mini-summit on women in FOSS. Will it do any good? How much of a problem is it really?

To address rising information technology costs, the government is making a major commitment to cloud computing, a move that aspires not only to cost and labor efficiencies, but also to environmental responsibility and openness to innovation. In a speech at the NASA Ames Research Center in California on Tuesday, federal CIO Vivek Kundra said that the government cannot continue to invest in traditional data centers to support its IT needs, citing a doubling in the energy cost at federal data centers between 2000 and 2006. Cloud computing, said Kundra, can simplify acquisition, budgeting, policy planning, and architecture. And to help that happen, he announced the launch of Apps.gov, a GSA-operated Web site that government agencies can use to buy and deploy cloud computing applications.

Whoever thought that Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora consist solely of free software would be wrong. The new list compiled by the Free Software Foundation showing truly free distributions has a mere nine entries.

The highlights of LinuxCon 2009, a conference organised by the Linux Foundation, will be available as a live video stream using the open CODECs Ogg / Theora, viewed via a Web browser Java applet. Alternatively, they may be viewed via an embedded player such as RealPlayer, MPlayer or the Windows Media Player.

This Nagios Mini-Course shows you how to configure Passive Checks from clients which are sent to a central Nagios Server. Passive checks use the NSCA or Nagios Service Check Adaptor which is an add-on for the Nagios Server. You can write custom scripts to evaluate applications and send the output to a central Nagios Server. Passive Checks are often used when a firewall prevents Nagios from obtaining information from the client.