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As a parent of three young boys, I often think about what it's going to take to be competitive in the job market of the future. Obviously, they'll need solid reading, writing, math and science skills, with history, literature and art thrown in to make them well-rounded. Being a computer nerd myself, I recognize the value of even basic computer skills.

Can't find what you want in a Linux system "off the shelf?" Create your own custom version.

Zaragoza, Spain-based eBox Technologies announced the availability of version 1.0 of its Ubuntu Linux-based eBox server distribution.The open source eBox 1.0 features LDAP, DHCP, NTP, DNS, and email servers, among other features, and provides a new development framework for building add-on modules, says the company.

Microsoft has recently announced that its beloved encyclopaedia, Microsoft Encarta, will soon be discontinued. After October 31, 2009 its contents will no longer be available. Both the online version and the CD ROM version will be discontinued. My first reaction was “what a pity”. My job is to gather and publish good contents. I know how much work goes into creating and publishing material. This news must have been quite hard to digest for people who have been working on Encarta for a while. The two main questions that come to mind, however, are: “Why?”, and more importantly, “What about the contents?” Read the full post mortem at Freesoftware Magazine.

The first beta of version 8.4 of PostgreSQL, the free object-relational database system, developed under the umbrella of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, has been released. After fourteen months in development, the new release contains hundreds of patches and dozens of new features.

My monitor gave up the ghost in the middle of the workday, naturally when I had deadlines and a half-dozens things to do right now. It turned out to be a fried video card, and I took the long way to figure it out, but I was able to keep working until I had time to troubleshoot and fix it, thanks to Linux's easy remote networking.

Earlier this week we looked at the Inspiron Mini 9, which was Dell's inaugural Atom-powered netbook. The hardware to the device was fine and it even shipped with Ubuntu Linux, albeit with a few modifications. In that article though we said we would have Ubuntu benchmarks coming from this 8.9" Intel device and today we have those numbers to share. We are looking at the performance of Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu 8.10, and Ubuntu 9.04 from the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook. Since Ubuntu 8.04.2, Intel's Atom performance has improved tremendously and Dell should begin thinking about upgrading past the Long-Term Support release.

The influence of RMS on the world of free software and beyond is, of course, immense. But sometimes his presence is more symbolic than real, as he seems to disappear off the map for weeks at a time, with little in the way of public statements or comments. Maybe this can be put down to the frequent travelling that he undertakes, as he continues tirelessly to spread the word about freedom. Whatever the reason for those intermittent silences, it's interesting to note something of a flurry of comments from him recently, and in quite surprising contexts.

This tutorial shows how to set up a CentOS 5.3 server (x86_64) that offers all services needed by ISPs and web hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. In the end you should have a system that works reliably, and if you like you can install the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box).

genisoimage is a pre-mastering program for creating ISO-9660 CD-ROM filesystem images, which can then be written to CD or DVD media using the wodim program. genisoimage includes support for making bootable “El Torito” CDs, as well as CDs with support for the Macintosh HFS filesystem.

The Government has been far from forthcoming when it comes to revealing any details behind the New South Wales (NSW) laptop tender choices. There are unanswered questions from Linux buffs, taxpayers, students and parents, and transparent Government advocates alike.

Recently I was asked a very simple question that I'm pretty sure I've never addressed in this blog over the mass of posts already churned out. Shell scripting has been addressed, to a great degree, on this blog, but (even the beginner stuff) has included a presumption of certain knowledge. It's easy to forget what it was like back when I started working on Linux and Unix, so I often make the cardinal sin of assuming everyone has already asked this question and had it answered.

While Intel has long backed an open-source graphics driver for their integrated graphics driver, it was not up until last year when Intel released the i965/G35 documentation that there was public, NDA-free documentation concerning their newer IGPs. Later that year they then released the GMA X4500HD series and since then we have been waiting for them to push out public documentation concerning their G45 chipset. Well, Intel has finally come to the table with this documentation and it is very extensive. This documentation drop today is split into several volumes and makes up well over 1,000 pages of Intel hardware documentation and register descriptions that are available under the Creative Common Attribution, No Derivative Works license.

CMus (also called C* Music Player) is a ncurses-based audio player which can be run in a shell, with no need for an X server. CMus is very powerful and highly configurable, and it features Vi-like keyboard shortcuts, which can be bound to other keys if needed. It supports various audio formats, including Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3 (with libmad), WAV, AAC or WMA. CMus is lightweight and I must say that it was a delight testing it, and although by default it lacks support for one of the features I consider a must-have, the Last.fm song submission, this can be accomplished by applying a patch and recompiling it.

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. and provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, today announced the immediate availability of the second generation of Hitachi Storage Replication Adapter for VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager. Today’s announcement adds support for the midrange Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage family, providing customers continuous, real time local and remote replication and automatic failover capabilities to ensure resilient data protection, high availability and disaster recovery for VMware environments.

"In a world where distinctions between open source and proprietary software are becoming increasingly irrelevant, what role can IP [Intellectual Property] play in facilitating greater collaboration with the industry for the benefit of business and customers alike?" While this quote appears near the end of Marshall Phelps and David Kline’s new book Burning the Ships: Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Microsoft, it does sum up nicely the thread that weaves through the book, a case study of how Microsoft reinvented itself and began leveraging its Intellectual Property for good (collaboration) instead of evil (punishment).

Sitting inside of every networking device is an operating system. In the case of Alcatel-Lucent, that operating system is the Alcatel-Lucent Operating System (AOS), which today is getting a significant new upgrade -- even though it could be one of the last AOS releases before the company moves it to Linux.

It is not often that you fail to find half a dozen free software programs to fill a particular niche -browsers, e-mail clients or file managers to name a few; so it was with both surprise and disappointment that I nearly drew a blank in my search for an Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) for GNU/Linux. Yes, Freevo and MythTV have this feature built in, but installing and configuring them just to get your mitts on an EPG looks like overkill. I wanted a simple, stand-alone EPG programme. I got TV-Browser and I got a hell of a lot more than I bargained for. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine.

If you build your own GNOME packages from source or use GARNOME to help in the process, get ready as GNOME 2.26.1 has just been released. GNOME 2.26.1 incorporates bug fixes, translation updates, and documentation changes since the release of GNOME 2.26 just one month ago.

All major development efforts are now being focused on GNOME 2.28 and planning for GNOME 3.0, but another point release for the 2.26 series will come next month...

According to a number of Linux distributors, a bug in the udev service under Linux can be exploited to obtain root privileges. The kernel uses udev to dynamically create device-specific files and folders (/dev/) for input and output, so that only devices which are actually connected appear in /dev. udev is not a direct component of the Linux kernel, but is included and activated by default in almost all Linux distributions which use 2.6 series kernels.