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The elusive *nix. Nobody knows about it yet it is one of the most widely used server operating systems. The wikipedia entry mentions it as the unknown giant of the internet. Huge internet portals like Yahoo! run on it. Why is it that no one knows about this widely used OS?

The PostgreSQL project has released version 8.4 of the open source database management software, with more than 290 additions and changes to features. The most numerous updates are for administrators, with new or tweaked administration and monitoring tools and commands, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group said in its launch statement on Tuesday. The project spent 16 months working on the new version of the database software.

Click here for the joke of the month.

I'm not embarrassed to have ideals, I am proud. Ideals elevate us above situational ethics. Ideals guide us into trying to be better people, and give us strong bases for making difficult decisions. (Such as No, little Bill, it is not OK to do anything in the name of making a buck.)

During some recent trips to retail stores across North America, The VAR Guy spotted five clear examples why Windows will continue to dominate Linux on Netbooks. Here’s the scoop.

According to Mahatma Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."* So by that reckoning, it must be pretty much 'job done' for free software. Over the past few months I have experienced the eerie sensation that no one is fighting us any more. Not only are audiences polite, enthusiastic and well informed at conferences, they are almost all using free software already.

In Part 1 of the series we looked at the early X window managers that ran on X display protocol based systems. The scale and range of them was from the very beginning where a user was presented with a menu and windows and little else. In Part 2 of the series we delved into desktop window manager environments, the area in between a full desktop system and a simple window manager; these were window managers which provided things like application bars, icon management of some sort and flexible interfaces to create modules or widgets for the environment but did not include (a lot of...) inherent applications. In the third part of the series we will examine the two main desktops in the X world, a look at the two newer desktop environments that are blurring between application centric/environment centric window managers, some core X technology that can enhance the X experience and finally a look ahead.

Do you really need a top-of-the-line computer, or can you get by with something as cheap as this $90 CPU/motherboard combo?

Debian, the foundation of Ubuntu, has rejected claims that it's potentially holding Linux's future hostage to Microsoft by including an open-source implementation of .NET in its code. A project spokesman has said GPL daddy Richard Stallman was wrong to say Mono will be featured in Debian's default installation, adding Mono would be used by just a mall number of users.

Try the second star to the right and join me in my wish for a virtual lab.

To add a bit of color to your man pages install the most pager. Add the MANPAGER setting to your shell ~/.profile to make the setting available when you login.

This course will help you understand the benefits of LDAP as well as implementation of LDAP. The OpenLDAP Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, fully featured, and open source LDAP suite of applications and development tools. The project is managed by a worldwide community of volunteers that use the Internet to communicate, plan, and develop the OpenLDAP Suite and its related documentation.

It is that time of the year again. Akademy 2009 is about to begin in only a few days. Held in the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium close to the beautiful beaches of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, this event is shaping up to be a special conference.

When the machine gets old and becomes useless. You get short on options. You can't sell it because you are so emotionally attached to it and it doesn't worth that much and you can't run new applications on it because it can't afford them. But you can turn it into a beautiful workstation using xubuntu.

The platform that has defined “cool” for years has not had a reputation for being an open platform, but that hasn’t discouraged a number of open source projects for iPhone/iPod Touch.

Some of us rely heavily on our personal information managers for keeping our appointment calendars, contacts, reminders, and notes. Gnome offers Evolution, and KDE has Kontact. Which one is better? Bruce Byfield takes a detailed look at both.

Earlier today, Canonical has announced the availability of a major security update for the following Ubuntu distributions: 6.06 LTS, 8.04 LTS, 8.10 and 9.04 (also applies to Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu). The update patches no more than 15 security issues (see below for details) discovered in the Linux kernel packages by various hackers. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to update your system as soon as possible!

In this tip, Juliet Kemp shows how to use xclip for copy-and-paste on the Linux command line-- without using the mouse.

Andrew Tridgell has published a patch that could make the Linux implementation of the FAT filesystem impervious to Microsoft patent claims of the kind that forced a settlement from TomTom. The patch alters the VFAT code so that it does not generate both short and long filenames, says Tridgell. The Microsoft FAT patent claims lay at the heart of its lawsuit against Dutch personal navigation device (PND) vendor TomTom earlier this year, which resulted in a TomTom settlement in late March.

While both Red Hat and Canonical/Ubuntu are offering cloud services, Canonical is not providing a certification program like Red Hat is for vendors. While Red Hat sees value in certification, Canonical does not. "At this time, we believe there is limited user value for certifying a public cloud provider which has already delivered a considerable brand for operational excellence in public cloud provision," Simon Wardley, head of Canonical's cloud strategy said.