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Flash cookies are the secret nasties of using the Flash player on any platform, and most computer users don't even know they exist. Like HTTP cookies, it is rather naive to assume that they are always used for our benefit. In this two-part series, Carla Schroder shows the Adobe way and then the Linux way of managing Flash cookies.

Life's certainties include death and taxes but also the advancement of the GNU/Linux® operating system, and the last two kernel releases did not disappoint. The 2.6.28 and 2.6.29 releases contain an amazing amount of new functionality, such as a cutting-edge enterprise storage protocol, two new file systems, WiMAX broadband networking support, and storage integrity checking. Discover why it's time to upgrade.

After more than a year of constant development, The Battle for Wesnoth 1.6 was put out on March 22. This release comes with new graphics and unit portraits, a new campaign, called 'Legend of Wesmere', the possibility to log into the multiplayer with the forum account, and many, many other improvements.

Okay, I may not be able to completely fulfill that promise, but you will most likely be saved from the second pass and thus a lot of encoding time quite often with this tipp. If you don't need the resulting file to e.g. nicely fit on a CD, this is probably perfect for you. Let's begin.

Novell announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Desktop (SLED) and Server (SLES) 11, offering new support for virtualization and cloud computing. The SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 11 distributions also include the Mono project extension for .NET compatibility, and a High Availability extension.

Mer is an outgrowth of Nokia's Maemo environment, designed to flesh out the tablet-centric operating system into a full-fledged Linux distribution suitable for embedded and desktop systems of all description. The project's genesis was an effort to back port the upcoming Maemo 5.0 release to no-longer-supported Nokia N800 and N810 tablets, but it has subsequently evolved to run on BeagleBoards, embedded navigation devices like the Pocket LOOX, and standard x86 hardware.

With the release yesterday of the Linux 2.6.29 kernel, we have set out to explore how the desktop performance has evolved over the past six major kernel releases. On a few occasions in the past we have provided kernel benchmarks (at one point even benchmarking 12 kernels), but this time around we have included nearly two dozen benchmarks using the Phoronix Test Suite. How has the Linux performance evolved since the release of the Linux 2.6.24 kernel back in early 2008? Well, simply put, the Linux 2.6.29 kernel in a few areas does pack some serious performance benefits.

Here are seven ways to pump up your browser, whether it's Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Mozilla's Firefox. Use these free browser add-ons to take notes in your browser, see thumbnails of Web pages in Google searches, drag an address in a Web page to an add-on and map it instantly, and quickly download video with one press of a hotkey.

Rumors of a Red Hat takeover have been circulating since time immemorial. Maybe this time there's some truth to it.

"The GoblinX Project is proud to announce the second release of the next G:Mini. The G:Mini 3.0 rc01 (2.9.90) is released.

It has been a while since last mentioning the Creative X-Fi sound cards at Phoronix, but it's not because the Linux support is all nice and working now that Creative open-sourced their X-Fi driver, but rather things have stalled. The X-Fi sound cards still are a sore spot on Linux and there isn't "out of the box" support in major Linux distributions.

Novell shipped SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 on March 24. The really interesting part of the story involves two related projects — called Mono and Just enough Operating System (JeOS). Indeed, Mono and JeOS could give SUSE Linux 11 a lift with software developers, Microsoft .Net customers and partners. Here’s the scoop.

Good morning my fellow Admins, Engineers, Scripters, Programmers, etc..... YOU GET THE IDEA :). For the past week, I have been learning all about the CIM and WBEM API. Since I am working alot more then I have ever have with VMware. I am trying to automate as much as possible with out using Perl. Now please do not think I am hating on Perl, it is not that at all, it is just the fact that I love Python, thats all! That being said here is the 1st part in a 2 part series on Listing Virtual Machines using Pywbem in Python. I the 1st part I will show you how to list Virtual Machines and data related to those VMs. Example Below...

Security researchers have identified a sophisticated piece of malware that corrals consumer routers and DSL modems into a lethal botnet. The "psyb0t" worm is believed to be the first piece of malware to target home networking gear, according to researchers from DroneBL, which bills itself as a real-time monitor of abusable internet addresses. It has already infiltrated an estimated 100,000 hosts. It has been used to carry out DDoS, or distributed denial of service, attacks and is also believed to use deep-packet inspection to harvest user names and passwords.

The disclosure that Red Hat have applied for a patent on what might strike some as an obscure corner of the software ecosystem has caused others to re-evaluate how open and collaborative Red Hat actually are. As the AMQP 1.0 standard entered into its final phase, a 2007 Red Hat patent application, the company now refers to as a "defensive" patent, on an obvious extension of AMQP, was automatically disclosed and caused quite stir. What is AMQP, why is it important, what has Red Hat done to cause a ruckus within the AMQP community, and what does it mean to open source in general.

"Tux Fleets of USB Keys to Boldly Go Where No Windows Has Gone Before", by Hung Chao-Kuei, is an excellent read all full of good insights, like "Microsoft is afraid of Linux-bootable usb keys" and "We shouldn't really care about what MS thinks. We should just mind our own business and boldly go where no windows has gone before." Wise advice! It is an excellent article and an enjoyable read.

Commercial Linux distributor Novell today takes the wraps off SUSE Linux 11, its riff on Linux for servers and desktops that now sports a commercially supported extension for the Mono runtime environment and a variant that provides high availability clustering of servers. The Mono Extension to SUSE Linux is the first time that Novell has offered commercial support for the Mono runtime, which allows applications that are coded in C# and using the .NET Framework to run atop non-Windows platforms. Novell bought into the open source Mono project when it acquired Ximian, the company behind Mono as well as the Gnome graphical user interface, back in the summer of 2003. That's a long time for Novell to take to get Mono commercial, but better late than never.

The latest version of SUSE Linux Enterprise, Novell Inc.'s commercial distribution of the open-source operating system, bears more fruit from Novell's controversial two-and-a-half-year-old interoperability alliance with Microsoft Corp. One version of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, what Novell likes to call SLE 11, will allow companies to run applications built with Microsoft's .Net platform to work on Linux without recompiling them. That version, called Mono Extension, even runs on IBM's System z, enabling IBM'S mainframe computers to run .Net apps.

VLC (VideoLAN Client) is one of the most popular video players on Linux, together with players like SMPlayer or Kaffeine. It plays many audio and video formats (including Xvid, DivX, H.264, Theora, WMV, Real Video, Ogg, MP3, FLAC, APE, AC3, WAV) together with DVDs and DVD ISO images. The version which comes included in the Debian Lenny repositories is 0.8.6h, which uses the wxWidgets kit and it is kind of outdated now. The latest release of VLC is 0.9.8a, which is now built in Qt 4 and includes several improvements over the 0.8.x series.

With NetworkManager 0.7, which can be found in most modern Linux distributions already, there is "out of the box" support for many mobile broadband / cellular cards in this excellent network management utility. Most SM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HDSPA, HSUPA, and EVDO devices can then provide an Internet connection to a Linux host usually with the click of a menu item from the NetworkManager plug-in. However, not all mobile broadband devices play well with Linux right now.