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It was the dawn of the third age of Java, ten years after the Sun/Microsoft war. The Java Community Process was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where technologists and vendors could work out their differences peacefully.

[I love the analogy, I happen to be a big fan of the show too. - Scott]

The apt-fast script little shellscript that increases the speed of apt-get by many times. You need to have the axel download accelerator installed, which is a simple, short process, but everything else is extremely straight forward. After installing and using apt-fast you will notice that the speed of downloading and installing a package is more than 26 times faster than before.

US-CERT is aware of public reports of multiple vulnerabilities affecting Linux. Exploitation of these vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to access the system with root or "superuser" privileges. The first of these vulnerabilities is due to a flaw in the implementation of the Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) protocol in Linux kernel versions 2.6.30 through 2.6.36-rc8. By sending a specially crafted socket function call, an attacker may be able to write arbitrary values into kernel memory and escalate privileges to root.

Firefox, the second most popular web browser, just upped the stakes significantly for its competitors with the release of a beta version of its browser for Android.

From KDE's Plasma Netbook to EasyPeasy, every Linux desktop for netbooks that I’ve seen are designed with the same assumptions. Each assumes that, because of the smaller screen, the desktop must be simpler than a workstation's, and will be used mainly for light computing in general and social networking in particular.

Most free software accumulates myths. Most people only know about it second hand (if at all), but few are slowed by the fact that they don't know what they are talking about. As a large desktop application that is also cross-platform, OpenOffice.org (or should I say LibreOffice?) seems to have attracted more myths than most. Here are the top five that I have kept stumbling across in eight years of advocacy..

What goes inside a computer case matters more than the case-- but a nice case is a pleasure to use, and it runs quieter and cooler. Here's a quick look at the excellent Antec 300.

The big news at the Ubuntu Developer Summit? Moving to Unity as the default interface for Ubuntu Desktop with Natty Narwhal (11.04), rather than GNOME Shell. Earlier this year, Canonical representatives had to deny that they were forking GNOME with the work on the Unity interface. (Quick disclaimer, I'm a GNOME Member and help out with GNOME PR.) Unity is a Canonical-sponsored project that was initially delivered for the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. GNOME Shell is the interface being developed for GNOME 3.0, which was delayed to spring 2011. Apparently, Canonical were being asked the wrong question. During the opening keynote, Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Canonical is committing to making Unity the default desktop experience "for users that have the appropriate software and hardware." Unity requires compositing to work properly, which means users need functioning 3D support to use the interface.

Varnish is an open source "web accelerator" which you can use to speed up your website. It can cache certain static elements, such as images or javascript but you can also use it for other purposes such as Loadbalancing or some additional security. In this tutorial we will focus on the latter one. In this mode, Varnish will stop incomplete HTTP requests from reaching your Apache webserver.

Earlier this month we delivered Ubuntu 10.10 benchmarks from some different hardware comparing the performance of this "Maverick Meerkat" release to that of Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04.1 LTS. The results were interesting, but since then we have had the time to complete additional tests. In this benchmarking roundabout, we decided to see how the performance of every release from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS through the new Ubuntu Linux release performs when tested in a virtualized environment using Linux's KVM virtualization. Here are the virtualized guest results for Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, 10.04.1 LTS, and 10.10.

If you have come across a tutorial or just someone on a forum who tells you to install something in Debian/Ubuntu that involves using apt-get, it is ok for you but when they tell you that you need to use a caret symbol (^) at the end, that’s where you become curious. What is even more weird is that when you search for the name of the package that the given command seems to install cannot be found using apt-cache search. e.g. You will see this used most often when someone tells you how to install LAMP server.

Many times, objects contain numerous attributes that define how they look, and they're not always perfectly uniform in relation to the object. For example, a used paint can would have paint dripping down the sides of the can—if we were creating this can in 3D, we'd have to tell Blender that there is a specific spot on our 3D mesh that contains different attributes than the rest of the mesh. This is where UV mapping comes in handy. UV coordinates are, in simple terms, a two-dimensional representation of the texture coordinates of a three-dimensional object. They allow us to tell Blender specific properties about specific areas of our objects in a scene.

Adobe Systems is targeting mobiles, TVs, and app-stores with new editions of various Flash-centric tools and its Rich Internet Application (RIA) framework. The company has unveiled preview editions of the next Flex Framework, its Flash Builder design and development environment, the Flash Catalyst design tool, and version 2.5 of its Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). Previews are due at Adobe's annual MAX conference in Los Angeles, California, with final code promised for sometime in 2011.

I just finished reading a fun and interesting book about Superman and his struggles with Hollywood. So I thought it fitting that I write one of this week’s Quick Looks about Super OS 10.10. No, Super OS is not from the planet Krypton and it’s not vulnerable to Kryptonite. It’s an Ubuntu remaster that takes the Ubuntu base on throws in a bunch of other software, drivers and codecs.

Yesterday, I stopped by my local Walmart to buy a wireless router for my network. I wanted something small with good performance, a good price, and compatible with GNU/Linux. As I searched the computer electronics aisle, I saw wireless routers ranging from over $100 all the way down to about $60. However, $60 was more than I wanted to spend. I didn't need anything fancy, just something that would allow me to get on the Internet with my IBM T40 laptop and my Dell netbook. I didn't need IEEE 802.11n, 802.11g is fast enough for my network needs. I looked down and I saw the little white and yellow box containing the Belkin Connect N150. It seemed like a nice looking device, which made me quite happy. I was even happier when I saw the price: $29.95!

LXer Feature: 24-Oct-2010

In this week's LXWR we have Canonical going on record about open core, Eight reasons to give the E17 a try, Oracle wants LibreOffice members to leave OOo council, The London Stock Exchange smashes the world record trade speed using Linux and with Ray Ozzie just the latest to walk out of Redmond, is this the beginning of the end for Microsoft? Enjoy!

Assuming you have one, take a look in your Mac's Applications folder. If you're anything like me, you've got an overwhelming number of amazing free or open source apps (Chrome, Adium, Quicksilver, Handbrake), a bunch of great clients to various (sometimes paid) web services (see: Dropbox, Hulu Desktop, Flickr Uploadr, TweetDeck, etc.), and Apple's own suite of pretty damned decent bundled apps (Mail, iCal, iPhoto, etc.). That isn't to imply that the Mac App Store can't spur a new wave of sales of desktop software, but even if the desktop software business is ripe for disruption or revival (and I'm not sure that it is), the space is nothing like mobile apps prior to 2008, where distribution was the primary problem.

Managing storage isn’t easy but Openfiler makes it less painful. You can create NFS and CIFS shares, iSCSI targets, web services, LDAP authentication, FTP services and Rsync services with Openfiler. You can setup quotas to limit those annoying space hogs and limit renegade connections with network security settings. For universal access to network attached storage, there may be no easier answer than Openfiler.

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Kubuntu 10.10 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Kubuntu 10.10 is derived from Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) and uses the KDE desktop instead of the GNOME desktop.

I find Linux to be an excellent general purpose computing platform for day to day personal and small business use. I like the fact that Linux does not cost me money. No, my time is not worthless, but I have wisely spent the time I needed learning how to install, configure and use Linux and the free, open source software that comes with it.