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What is a distribution and how does it differ from the distribution next door? Do they provide a different-enough experience to the user who is in search of a capable desktop?

The German TV show Giga presented by NBC Europe has Mozilla Firefox (0.8) listed as #1 on their Tool of the Day toplist. Firefox has held its lead for the four weeks it has been listed so far and today Mozilla Firebird (0.7) has been added to the list a second time to offer the users a chance to compare both versions (although it is more likely that the moderators just didn't notice it is one and the same product in two different versions).

MySQL is "The World's Most Popular Open Source Database," at least according to the MySQL Web site. But in spite of this popularity many corporations are resistant to adopting MySQL. There are several reasons for this, from the misguided belief that open source is the software equivalent of a child's wood shop project to the belief that nothing free is ever good. There was, however, one valid complaint against MySQL-unlike its shrink-wrapped counterparts, such as Oracle or DB2, MySQL doesn't support stored procedures. Make that past tense-the latest developer release, MySQL 5.0, does support stored procedures.

Claims of speed hikes of up to 1,000 per cent are being made by developers Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton, both of the Open Software Development Lab, for the Linux 2.6 kernel. You could be forgiven for being sceptical. To be fair, though, it's also been reported that the main claim for the kernel's improved I/O scheduling can increase database workload processing by as much as 15 per cent.

Merits of simpler Linux distribution debated at ClusterWorld.

It's been about three years since I woke up one morning and discovered my Web/mail server was rooted. Thinking back, I must have assumed that just running Linux was enough to keep me out of harm's way. These days I am not so cocky. I try to keep current with security patches for the apps I run. I don't run services I don't need or use. And there is a firewall between me and the wild. One thing I haven't made a part of my regular routine -- not yet, at least -- is checking for rootkits on a regular basis. That may be about to change, since I found a nifty little project called rootkit hunter.

According to a posting on Bugtraq [1], Shaun Colley discovered and researched a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability which exists in the GNU Sharutils [2] due to lack of bounds checking when handling the '-o' command-line option.

According to a security advisory published by Rapid7 [0], two vulnerabilities exists in the ISAKMP packet display functions of tcpdump [1]. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has reviewed both problems. CAN-2004-0183 [2] identifies an overflow when displaying ISAKMP delete payloads with large number of SPIs, while CAN-2004-0184 [3] identifies an integer underflow when displaying ISAKMP identification payload. These vulnerabilities appear only when verbose packet display is enabled by running tcpdump with the -v option.

KD Executor is a record and playback tool for Qt and KDE applications. In addition, it contains a test environment which uses this record and playback tool for testing Qt and KDE applications.

Enterprises are feeling the pain of impending, expensive Microsoft Exchange upgrades. As an alternative, IBM Lotus has been offering Domino-based products for Red Hat Inc. and SuSE Linux AG and says its commitment to Linux is going to grow. In this interview, Lotus' Linux strategist Ken Brunsen and messaging and collaboration senior manager John Woods talk about the viability of Linux as a messaging platform, the headaches associated with Exchange and whether Notes will soon run on Linux.

Recently, key players in the mobile phone industry announced that they are evaluating a fourth OS for their products – the hugely popular open-sourced Linux, which requires no licence to use and is just as well supported.

Issue 101 of Linux Gazette is ready for viewing and download at http://linuxgazette.net/

IT likes to believe that it is a logical industry where all decisions (or at least the majority of them) are based on fact rather than fashion. Alas, this is not always so and being “in vogue” is often a subliminal driver behind certain of the technology waves that regularly sweep through the industry. The surge of “Open Source” solutions has, on occasion, exploited this unconscious desire to conform to the desire to be trendy, and not without other, more logical reasoning. However, not everything in the world of open source, as in the more traditional software sector, is perfect.

An aussie group has attacked tech analysts for being biased against Linux and open source. In a press release, the Open Source Industry Australia has called on the crystal ball gazers to write "fair and equitable reports" on Linux, free and open source software.

In a first for the industry behemoth, Microsoft has donated its Windows Installer XML (WiX) to SourceForge.net, the open source developer network. WiX is a toolset that uses XML code to build Windows installation packages.

The login program included in util-linux could leak sensitive information under certain conditions.

"Clam AntiVirus is a GPL anti-virus toolkit for UNIX. The main purpose of this software is the integration with mail servers (attachment scanning). The package provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner, and a tool for automatic updating via Internet. The programs are based on a shared library distributed with the Clam AntiVirus package, which you can use with your own software. Most importantly, the virus database is kept up to date."

Setting up and troubleshooting a CUPS environment.

Parle Tablet Tools Pvt. Ltd - a Mumbai based pharma engineering company that manufactures tablet tools and dies for pharmaceutical companies - has deployed ERPWEB, a unique Open Source, web-based low-cost ERP. Developed by ASIC Infotech Pvt Ltd., ERPWEB is an Open Source, customizable web-based ERP III (according to Gartner definition), built with the aid of SoftRobot Codeless Technology, a zero code technology also innovated by ASIC.

Of a total of 92,245 domain servers which were tested using fingerprinting software, 74,698 run one version or the other of BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain), an implementation of the Domain Name System protocols which provides an openly redistributable reference implementation of the major DNS components.