Showing all newswire headlines

Once we demonstrated a GNU/Linux live cd for him and showed him how he could run his "necessary" programs via Wine and VirtualBox, he was sold...and I mean on the spot. We used two 8 gig thumb drives to copy his music, pictures and documents then did a partition session and replaced his Windows Vista sytem with Mint Linux. After 29 minutes, I announced that his install was done and that we would now boot into his new Linux Operating System. His jaw dropped.

In this tutorial I will describe how to install and configure MyDNS-NG and MyDNSConfig 3 on Debian Lenny. MyDNS-NG is a DNS server that uses a MySQL database as backend instead of configuration files like, for example, Bind or djbdns. MyDNSConfig is an easy to use web-based interface to MyDNS-NG. MyDNSConfig can create all types of DNS records that are available in MyDNS and adds features like user management and access privileges.

A vulnerability in the CIFS client in the Linux Kernel code makes it possible for a manipulated SMB server to cause users systems to crash or be compromised. The problem is caused by a buffer in the CIFSTCon function in fs/cifs/connect.c file being too small. This function is used when the server responds to a connection request for a resource, known as a Tree Connect. Overflowing the undersized buffer could allow code to be injected and executed. The bug only comes into play if the users system attempts to mount a resource on a manipulated server.

I love old technology as much as the next techno-geezer, but come on, it wasn't all wonder and goodness. After we're done reminiscing about the good old days of operating systems, let's reflect on the bad old days of operating systems as well. After all, the bad times are still with us -- even in 2009, there are still some wretched operating systems out there. In historical order, from oldest to newest, here's my own personal list of the top (bottom?) 10 OS stinkers.

Any old standards hand forced to choose the single most disputed issue in standard setting over the past decade would likely respond with a deceivingly simple question: "What does it mean to be an 'open standard?'" A similar debate rages in the open source community between those that believe that some licenses (e.g., the BSD, MIT and Apache licenses) are "open enough," while others would respond with an emphatic Hell No! (or less printable words to similar effect).

Packet filtering and firewalling has a long history in Linux. The first filtering mechanism, called "ipfwadm," was released in 1995 for the 1.2.1 kernel. This code was used until the 2.2.0 stable release (January, 1999), when the new "ipchains" module took over. While ipchains was useful, it only lasted until 2.4.0 (January, 2001), when it, too, was replaced by iptables/netfilter, which remains in the kernel now. If netfilter maintainer Patrick McHardy has his way, though, iptables, too, will be gone in the future, replaced by yet another mechanism called "nftables." This article will give an overview of how nftables works, followed by a discussion of the motivations behind this change.

Commercial Linux distributor Novell today announced that the openSUSE Project, which drives the development variant of its Linux, will support the creation and packaging of various Linuxes for ARM processors using the openSUSE Build Service version 1.6. According to Novell, the support for building application stacks and Linux distros for 32-bit ARM RISC processors was donated to the openSUSE community by German software company DataSoft GmbH. DataSoft has created a set of applications, called 5e, for network operators and content providers that is stacked atop the openSUSE distro.

The whole Libspotify API (initially with support just for Linux on IA-32) comes with conditions attached which make it anything but open and hardly likely to propel it out of the iTunes shadow.

You can install and run Ubuntu from within Windows without any risk of accidentally deleting your existing programs and files by using Wubi, an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users. Unlike UNetbootin, which installs Linux on a hard disk partition, Wubi works by installing Ubuntu within a file stored on your Windows drive, and adding itself to the Windows boot.ini file to allow you to choose between Windows and Linux at boot time.

Several months ago, I wrote how to make activity designers happy by making it easier to create simple learning activities using popular software development tools, particularly for the Sugar learning environment. Back then, I concluded that Adobe's Flash player and Flex libraries were the proper tools for this purpose. I was wrong. Adobe's flash and flex are great tools but they will never form the basis of a thriving ecosystem of open-source educational software. This is because Adobe's flash files are distributed in binary format, an immediate disincentive to sharing the source code.

Sun has added support for the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) to the latest version of its "open source" desktop virtualization software. Other enhancements to VirtualBox 2.2 (left) include greater hypervisor optimization and 3D graphics acceleration for Linux and Solaris applications, says an eWEEK story.

For the first time it's possible to choose which kernel you want to use for the popular Linux distro Debian, either the Linux kernel, or the FreeBSD kernel.

The Windows share of the US netbook market is a staggering 96 percent. That's up from less than 10 percent of US unit sales during the first half of 2008 when the words netbook and Linux pretty much ran together. Now it seems that the netbook revolution is leaving Linux behind.

Written in GTK, Deluge is a powerful BitTorrent client which, in my opinion, is the GNOME counterpart to KTorrent, the most popular client in KDE. The version I will review in this article is the latest at the time of writing, 1.1.6, released on April 6, 2009.

The Linux Foundation (LF) announced that OpenSUSE's Build Service will be incorporated in its Linux Developer Network (LDN). Claimed to be the only development platform that enables software to be packaged for all major Linux distributions, the OpenSUSE Build Service was released in a 1.6 version that adds ARM support.

Vimdiff starts Vim on two (or three) files. Each file gets its own window. The differences between the files are highlighted. This is a nice way to inspect changes and to move changes from one version to another version of the same file.

The first "Request For Comments" was released 40 years ago on the 7. April, 1969. These written discussions of the "Network Working Group" became the basis for the open internet standards. 40 years ago on the 7. April 1969, the first Request For Comments was released. In RFC 1, Steve Crocker described the software architecture of the emerging ARPANET. The original RFCs were actual contributions to discussions within a "Network Working Group" of manageable size (RFC 2 is a direct answer to RFC 1). As the group was still working on the ARPANET setup, the first RFCs were exchanged on paper by post.

As Android gains more popularity, it may start showing up on netbooks, which would be a good thing. However, there's a potential downside: The further Android gets from its roots, the greater the likelihood it will not be able to run native Linux applications that haven't been ported to the Android environment. A second Linux sandbox could be the answer.

A consequence of Linux's amazing growth is a growing new user population that is not accustomed to having any power. Folks, you have the power-- you don't have to sit around all sad because Linux is missing an application or feature that you need. What you do is roll up your sleeves and help make it happen, because that is how Linux works, and that is what makes Linux--and all Free and Open Source software-- so good.

Microsoft Deutschland GmbH has been fined $9 million by the German Bundeskartellamt (cartel or anti-trust agency) for anticompetitive MS Office pricing. Microsoft allegedly fixed a price at a retailer for its Office Home & Student 2007 product.