Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

There are numerous open source firewall, router and network server projects. In this two-part tutorial we will discuss the free community version of Endian. It's a Linux distribution that can turn any system into a full-featured network and Internet security appliance. First, we will perform the basic configuration of Endian. This includes setting up the Internet connection and creating a local network with DHCP enabled. Then, we will set up the OpenVPN server. (Note that this tutorial is based on Endian Firewall Community version 2.4, released May 29 2010.)

Steve Jobs has apparently weighed into the debate over Apple's decision to deprecate Java on the Mac, and his terse explanation was promptly deprecated by Java founder James Gosling. According to MacRumors.com, a concerned Java developer emailed the Apple cult leader on Thursday to ask about Apple's plans for the platform, and as he's been known to do from time to time, Jobs responded.

While users of Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" have had access to an early release of the Catalyst 10.10 Linux driver that AMD had sent over to Canonical in advance in order to provide X.Org Server 1.9 support, the rest of the Linux-using public now finally has access to the official Catalyst 10.10 build. Those that have already used Catalyst 10.10 in the Ubuntu Maverick release have been rather excited for its changes.

Back in July, Rackspace and NASA announced an effort to create sophisticated open source cloud computing infrastructure that could compete with proprietary offerings. Dubbed the OpenStack project, it's targeted to manage both software-centric and storage-centric aspects of cloud computing, focusing on clusters that can leverage distributed resources. The platform is now available under an Apache license, and NASA and Rackspace have discussed plans to switch their current cloud computing infrastructures to OpenStack, in an effort to leverage a more scaleable platform. OpenStack has substantial resources behind it, and is yet another sign that open source cloud efforts are to be taken seriously.

Microsoft has withdrawn from the development of IronPython and IronRuby and has handed over responsibility to the open source community. For many, the decision was hardly surprising: Shortly after leaving Microsoft early last August, the chief developer of IronPython, Jimmy Schementi, had already expressed his disappointment about his team having been reduced to half its size within a year. The developer said that this was the reason why the team needed so long to complete the Visual Studio support for IronPython. It was probably also the reason why IDE support was long unavailable in Visual Studio for IronRuby. A related prototype was only announced by Jason Zander, who was responsible for the implementation development of the two script languages, in a blog posting which also explains the changes affecting the two projects.

While the Linux 2.6.36 kernel was released yesterday, we already have our eyes towards the Linux 2.6.37 kernel to see what new features this next kernel will bring, any performance changes that may come as a result (we continue to benchmark the kernel everyday), and this will likely be the kernel version used by Ubuntu 11.04 and other early 2011 Linux distributions. While we have already reported on some of the features that should be merged into the Linux 2.6.37 kernel, there's at least three major features we have been looking forward to that will be sadly missing from this kernel.

Nokia has announced some new plans to refine its mobile platform strategy. The company says that the current Symbian versioning scheme will be dropped in favor of a more rapid and incremental approach to development. The company also affirmed its commitment to the open source Qt development toolkit, which will become the "sole focus" of Nokia's application development efforts across both Symbian and the Linux-based MeeGo platform.

Now under VMware's wing, Zimbra has released Zimbra Desktop 2.0 productivity client. Zimbra Desktop 2.0's main feature is email, so we decided to see how it stacks up against Gmail. The verdict? Google probably isn't too worried.

For quite a while now there has been work towards bettering the Debian source package format, in particular with more effective handling of Debian packaging files, and this resulted in a new source format coming about: 3.0 Quilt. This new system integrates a patch system into dpkg-source, which ended up being based upon Quilt. Besides the 3.0 Quilt format there is also a 3.0 Native format being worked on that is more similar to the original 1.0 source package format.

Mozilla has officially revealed “Chromeless,” an experimental project by the Firefox creator that lets developers create their own browser interfaces using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other web technologies. Currently, Mozilla’s Firefox browser utilizes XUL (XML User Interface Language) to implement much of its interface. It also serves as one of the primary tools for constructing Mozilla extensions. The result is a somewhat customizable browser interface, but XUL presents certain limitations and barriers in the path to full customization (they can’t access privileged XPCOM objects).

Microsoft has officially ended a half-decade flirtation with building its own .NETized scripting languages, and it lost a languages guru to Google in the process. The company has handed code and project responsibility for IronRuby and IronPython to "the community," six years after it started the projects and then stuck them in limbo. The IronPython project will be coordinated by Miguel de Icaza, Michael Foord, Jeff Hardy and Jimmy Schementi, with de Icaza and Schementi also co-ordinating IronRuby. Schementi quit Microsoft in August, having complained about a "serious lack of commitment" to IronRuby and dynamic languages in general on .NET by the giant.

Every Linux user has been new at some point, and unless you’ve got a history of UNIX administration, the transition was likely a bit daunting. Many people began learning Linux before sites like Google and StackExchange made it easy to find answers, and ended up having to figure everything out in their own. While inconvenient, this approach can force you to challenge yourself and learn things about the system that you might otherwise never find out. Usually here at MakeTechEasier, we focus on specific topics for our tutorials. This time we’re taking a different approach, and providing a high-level overview of series of steps designed to hone the skills of a Linux beginner, and turn them into the kind of geek who compiles a new kernel for fun.

There has been a lot of commentary in recent days about the OpenOffice.org community council decision to ask people who have aligned themselves with The Document Foundation (TDF) to resign their seats on the council. So, of course, what we need is a little bit more commentary. First, when reading the minutes, it’s worth noting that this was not a voted decision. At 21:50, Louis Suarez-Potts proposed “that the TDF members of the CC consider the points those of us who have not joined TDF have made about conflict of interest and confusion [and] resign their offices, so as to remove the apparent conflict of interest their current representational roles produce”. He then proposed a deadline of Tuesday “to deal with this” – by emergency meeting of the council. So there was no decision to expel anyone, Louis made a proposal which did not obtain a consensus decision. That said, reading the minutes, there is clear alignment between supporters of TDF on one side and the rest of the council on the other side. And “the rest of the council” is Louis Suarez-Potts, Andreas Bartel, Eike Rathke, Juergen Schmidt, Matthias Huetsch and Martin Hollmichel on behalf of Stefan Taxhet – all Oracle employees.

After years of being outside of the mainline, the AppArmor security system is now finally part of the main Linux kernel. Linux founder Linus Torvalds formally released the 2.6.36 kernel this week nearly three months after the release of the 2.6.35 kernel. AppArmor has been in use by Linux distributions since at least 2006 when Novell first open sourced the code as a rival option to SELinux which has been championed by Red Hat. Ubuntu picked up AppArmor in 2007 with the 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon release.

The new kernel version is notable because it hasn't grown in size – yet it contains hundreds of advancements which will be obvious to end users, who don't often notice changes in their Linux distribution's kernel.

The Apple iPad is without question a wildly successful product in a market space that's seen many false starts. It seems like the iPad was at the right place at the right time to scratch an itch we didn't know we had. Many wrote it off early on as just an expensive ebook reader with too many limitations to replace your netbook, much less a full-fledged business laptop.

Being developed since 2007 and integrated in Ubuntu since 2008 with their Ubuntu 8.04 LTS release has been Wubi, the Windows-based Ubuntu Installer. While most Linux users tend to install Ubuntu using the LiveCD or the alternate CD installer, by using Wubi you can setup a full desktop from within Microsoft Windows. Wubi places Ubuntu into a disk image still residing on the Windows partition, thereby making it easy to install and remove without risking any problems of messing up your drive's partitions. While Wubi may lower the barrier for entry to trying out an Ubuntu Linux desktop, it does not come without some performance penalties associated to using the loop-mounted device stored on the Microsoft file-system.

The Linux Foundation has announced that this year, Linux creator Linus Torvalds is one of three recipients of the prestigious C&C Prize. According to the NEC C&C Foundation which awarded the prize, Torvalds is being recognised for his "contributions to the advancement of the information technology industry, education, research, and the improvement of our lives".

For general use, it is sufficient to configure KDE using the options provided in System Settings and in individual application settings. Nevertheless, to unlock the full power of KDE, you should learn some of the system administration tools that it provides.

The developers behind ReactOS, the free software operating system working to re-implement the architecture of Microsoft Windows XP/2003 and attaining binary compatibility with existing Windows software, is now out with a new release. The ReactOS release came about one year ago, but out this afternoon is the brand new ReactOS 0.3.12.