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An SSL portal isn't as secure as a real VPN (virtual private network) such as OpenVPN, but it's easier to set up. The Untangle gateway makes setting up and managing an SSL-based Web portal fast and easy; Eric Geier shows how.

For a long time I relied on an external hard drive and Jungle Disk as my daily backup solution. This wasn't the most advanced backup setup, but it did the trick. Recently, however, I added a new device to my local network: a tiny Linux-based server with the silly name Bubba Two.

The KDE vs. GNOME debate — which we sincerely hope we aren't sparking anew — is one of the great legacies of the Linux world. Everyone seems to have an opinion, whether it's passionate support for one coupled with vehement odium for the other, a more general sense of "This is what I started with," or a love of an entirely different, less mainstream desktop environment. All of those sentiments have surely been on display within the openSUSE community of late, as the distribution has worked its way towards choosing a default desktop.

KernelCheck compares your running kernel with the latest kernel from kernel.org, compares the latest kernel with that posted in the Master Kernel Thread, and (optionally) builds the latest kernel automatically.

Microsoft is a true master when it comes to ignoring Web standards. Thanks to Google, that could now change in terms of the SVG vector graphics format.

Litigation between the SCO Group and Novell over the copyright to Unix grinds slowly onwards. The Court of Appeals has affirmed that SCO must pay approximately $2.5 million in royalties to Novell, but has remanded the question of whether the copyright to Unix was passed on to SCO when the distribution rights were sold, back to the Utah District Court for retrial.

A US federal appeals court overturned a judge’s ruling that granted Novell the copyright of the Unix computer OS yesterday. A panel of three judges of the 10th US circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a judge in the August 2007 case wrongfully handed the copyright to Novell. As a result the panel has ordered a “remand for trial” to establish ownership.

In this article by Alfonso Romero, we will learn how to configure NetBeans, VirtualBox and the Turnkey LAMP Appliance to develop complex PHP applications in a virtual environment. This article explains the process of creating a virtual machine, configuring the NetBeans PHP IDE, and managing a WordPress project with NetBeans in a step wise manner.

Network device drivers have been using the increasingly misnamed NAPI ("new API") interface for some time now. NAPI allows a network driver to turn off interrupts from an interface and go into a polling mode. Polling is often seen as a bad thing, but it's really only a problem when poll attempts turn up no useful work to do. With a busy network interface, there will always be new packets to process; "polling," in this situation, really means "going off to deal with the accumulated work." When there is always work to do, interrupts informing the system of that fact are really just added noise. Your editor likes to compare the situation to email notifications; anybody who gets a reasonable volume of email is quite likely to turn such notifications off. They are distracting, and there is probably always email waiting whenever one gets around to checking.

A federal appeals court Monday overturned a 2007 decision that Novell owns the Unix code, and the ruling now clears the way for SCO to pursue a $1 billion copyright infringement case against IBM. In a 54-page decision, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said it was reversing the 2007 summary judgment decision by Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, which found that Novell was the owner of Unix and UnixWare copyrights.

This tutorial explains how to install and use Back In Time on an Ubuntu 9.04 desktop. Back In Time is a simple backup tool for Linux inspired from "flyback project" and "TimeVault". The backup is done by taking snapshots of a specified set of directories.

Over the years, Xfce gained a reputation of being a lightweight alternative for the two major desktop environments on Linux, KDE and GNOME. This comes from the fact that Xfce usually uses less resources, comes with applications which offer basic functionality and clean, simple interfaces, and the general performance of Xfce is better, at least when it comes to memory cost, than both KDE or GNOME. Xubuntu uses Xfce and very often it is recommended for older hardware which can't handle the latest releases of Ubuntu or Kubuntu.

Many Linux users, even the newest ones, love Linux because it is highly customizable. KDE in particular is one desktop environment that is very easy and fun to customize. Whether you want three panels and a rotating slideshow of wallpaper photos from your vacation in Peru, or simply want to make sure text files always open in your favorite text editor, KDE can deliver. One important customization features is file association.

KernelCheck is a a program that automatically compiles and installs the latest Kernel for Debian based Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc.). The program also allows for automatic installation of proprietary video drivers via EnvyNG. Features • Fetch latest kernel information (mature kernel, mature kernel patch, stable development prepatch) • Download and compile any 2.6 kernel into a .deb package • Auto-fix for ALSA sound in new kernels • Auto-optimize new kernel • Option to configure kernel options manually • Option to install the nVidia kernel module/driver on reboot • Option to reconfigure the X server • Custom kernel patching • Multiple CPU jobs for faster compilation

As WorksWithU reported last week, the Gnome application Empathy was set to become the default instant-messaging client in Ubuntu 9.10 upon its release October, replacing Pidgin. But Ubuntu developers have been reconsidering that decision in the last few days. Here’s the story, with some thoughts.

It was with much joy that the Linux community saw two harmful myths about open source get put in their places recently. Myth #1: Linux is bad for business. Linux Foundation: More than 70 percent of work on the kernel today is done by developers who are being paid for their efforts. Myth #2: Linux netbooks have a high rate of customer returns. Dell: No more so than Windows netbooks.

See...we''re not just giving computers away, we are brutally smashing open an opportunity that has been locked away from these kids. Be it through proprietary and expensive software, lousy parenting, mismanaged finances or just being plain poor, I personally don''t give a d@mn. They will have a Linux-Powered computer...and they will have it just as soon as we can get it to them. Now I need your help to do it.

Install Ubuntu kernel updates without rebooting using Ksplice Uptrack. Ksplice Uptrack is an update service for the Linux kernel; it automatically delivers security and reliability improvements to your machine, without the disruption of rebooting.

Recently the dot carried an article about the first public release of PySide, LGPL python bindings to Qt. We conducted a short interview with one of the people behind PySide, Nokia employee Matti Airas

Last week we provided benchmarks of Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 4, but Ubuntu is not the only Linux distribution preparing for a major update in the coming months. Also released in the past few days were OpenSuSE 11.2 Milestone 6 and Mandriva Linux 2010.0 Beta 1. To see how these three popular distributions compare, we set out to do our usual Linux benchmarking dance.