Showing headlines posted by dave

Computer sleuths interested in running forensic PC operations on a Linux machines should take a look at an open source tool called Foremost.

Much has been made about the open source revolution, and with good reason. The open source development model produces superior software.

How one university department set up labs between campuses.

Linus Torvalds has released the Linux 2.6.7 stable kernel. It fixes a security bug that allowed users with shell access to a Linux host to bring down the system.

Enterprise IT shops used to have a clear vision for Linux and Unix use, but the potential of the 2.6 kernel, better vendor support and a competitive commercial Linux market is clouding that demarcation. A recent Burton Group research report concluded that Linux is "good enough" to supplant Unix for some specific high-end tasks generally considered Unix's exclusive territory. Author Gary Hein cautions, however, that Linux is not ready for every enterprise role.

How committed is IBM to the open-source movement? Officially, IBM is the world's loudest promoter of open-source software, spending millions to run Linux advertisements and fund an open-source development lab, and devoting hundreds of its own programmers to cranking out open-source code. So it is strange, rivals say, that in the field, IBM's sales reps are battling to keep some customers from moving to Linux and other open-source programs--especially customers currently using AIX, IBM's pricey Unix-based operating system.

Leading InfiniBand companies today announced the formation of the OpenIB Alliance, an industry association chartered to deliver a single open source Linux-based software stack for deploying InfiniBand architecture in compliance with the InfiniBand Trade Association interconnect standard.

I received an email a few weeks ago following a column I wrote on backups. The reader said, "I'm looking for a way to back up (preferably image) my current Fedora install to CD-RW. Ideally, I guess what I'm looking for is 'bare-metal' disaster recovery -- i.e., boot up from CD, enter some command(s) and have my (mostly!) working Fedora install re-imaged back to my HD." I didn't, but I suspected I could find a LiveCD for this purpose. Sure enough, Mondo Rescue does everything the man asked for. The only drawback -- if there is one -- is that it's more geared for advanced users or system admins that it is for noobies.

The German version of the alternative license system Creative Commons was formally launched during the third Wizard of OS conference in Berlin last week. Larry Lessig, Stanford Law School Professor and Creative Commons wizard, presented the license as a simple idea to mark content with freedoms bestowed upon users by authors - in contrast to the trend of ever stricter copyright regimes.

Using const correctly in order to future-proof today's class designs.

A flaw in the Linux kernel allows a 20-line C program to crash most distributions using the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels running on x86 and x86-64 architectures, according to security researchers.

The City of Bergen recently announced plans to migrate many of its servers to SUSE Linux. We spoke to the city's CTO, Ole Bjoern Tuftedal, to get his take on why Norway's second-largest city was making the move.

In a move that echoes an earlier high-profile migration by the German city of Munich, authorities in the Norwegian city of Bergen have opted to replace existing core Windows and Unix systems with Linux. The two-phase roll-out will see the 20 existing Oracle database servers running on HP-UX that support the City's health and welfare applications replaced with SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 running on HP Integrity Itanium 64 bit servers.

When a company's 39-year-old CFO quits just days before quarterly earnings to pursue new opportunities, it's a clue to invest your money elsewhere. When the same company's stock is priced beyond perfection, that's proof it's time to sell.

There has been a lot of commentary recently about Gnome, and a common source of confusion seems to be Gconf - what is it, how does it work, and so on. Some people even seem to confuse Gconf with the registry database in Windows. I will attempt to clear some of this confusion and give an overview of Gconf, and why it looks the way it does.