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You don't see many physical gadgets coming out of the high-tech Demo conference anymore, the confab made famous as the launchpad for Palm Pilot and TiVo. What typically emerges now are tools and services around social media and productivity. Still, executive producer Chris Shipley says she saw more consumer hardware in advance of Demo than even during boom times, though only a few made it onto the conference stage. Times are tough, and Demo took a hit in attendance and in exhibitors: 39, down from more than 70 in peak years. Here's my take on a couple of interesting products this time around, a netbook computer with a twist and a network of cheap consumer webcams. Caveat: I haven't tested these yet.

Recently, Vital Wave Consulting, of TCO fame, did a in-depth Landscape Analysis of Low-cost Computing Devices. In that report, they came away with an amazing conclusion:

So your users need access to Exchange and data from outside your organisation. Sure you can set up RPC over HTTPS and various other tools to access the data. I just find OpenVPN very good, convenient and reliable.

Not everyone who's into Linux is a dyed in the wool techie. While some people need to know the intimate workings of their PCs and what runs them, others are quite happy simply to use them. There will always a certain amount of crossover, but the one thing that neatly distinguishes the techies from the power users is the command line interface (CLI). Old-school Linux users swear that it's the only real way to do things properly, while the rest of us often avoid it like the plague. But what if we gave you just enough command-line knowledge to let you do all the important things, without having to don sandals and a fake beard?

The ReactOS team has just put out its latest newsletter, and it contains some interesting information on the progress being made. However, it also provides some definitive insight into what, exactly, the project is trying to recreate - a topic of some confusion. People were wondering what Windows version the ReactOS team was aiming its compatibility arrows at. Some claimed Windows 2000, others were sure it was Windows XP. As it turns out, the situation is a little more complicated than that, as the team looks separately at the kernel and Win32.

Like Dracula, the old myth that free software can't innovate keeps returning. But this accusation is one that's overdue for a stake through the heart. Those who have experienced free software projects firsthand know that they depend on innovation and generally foster it. Bruce Byfield aims to retire this moldy canard.

When I first began using Linux, I was fortunate that I had a few friends around who knew it well, and were able to answer my questions and provide support. Not everyone is so lucky. Fortunately, these days there are a multitude of ways you can get the info you need without calling up Cousin Ron the Computer Wiz. He’s probably busy recompiling his kernel anyway. Many of the things I’ve listed here are well known to long time Linux users, I’m hoping that those who are just starting out, or are considering the switch, can find a few useful resources for making your system work the way you want. Linux is meant to be tinkered with, there are examples and how-tos everywhere.

Debating the value of "my first time using Linux" articles was the pastime of choice recently in the open source blogosphere. Other topics of discussion included the Linux Foundation's takeover of Linux.com from SourceForge and the ongoing saga of why Linux isn't accepted by mainstream users yet.

This document describes how to install a Postfix mail server that is based on virtual users and domains, i.e. users and domains that are in a MySQL database. I'll also demonstrate the installation and configuration of Courier (Courier-POP3, Courier-IMAP), so that Courier can authenticate against the same MySQL database Postfix uses. The resulting Postfix server is capable of SMTP-AUTH and TLS and quota. Passwords are stored in encrypted form in the database. In addition to that, this tutorial covers the installation of Amavisd, SpamAssassin and ClamAV. I will also show how to install SquirrelMail as a webmail interface so that users can read and send emails and change their passwords.

If you’re not beginning to think green, you’re a release behind. In today’s world you have to think green. But how do you do that without installing a roof of solar panels? If you are using (or thinking of using) Linux, you’re one step ahead of the competition. In this article, you will find 10 solid ways to start thinking green in your IT department. It’s responsible, it’s smart, and it’ll save you money and time on this great planet.

The Linux server market is poised to reach $50 billion dollars in three years. The embedded, mobile and netbook markets have exploded recently, resulting in rapid expansion of Linux use in companies previously who used proprietary offerings. When a market grows this quickly, the need for well trained developer talent rises just as precipitously. The freelance marketplace Odesk recently found that Linux related jobs surged from 128 in 2006 to 2014 jobs listed in its service in 2009.1 The Linux Foundation is meeting this demand with a new training program that will produce developers with unmatched technical skills.

A surprising decision from the second-highest court for US patent cases will put meaningful restrictions on the patentability of software here, Red Hat patent lawyer Rob Tiller said in a well-attended talk at the Southern California Linux Expo. In a surprise October ruling in the case of In re Bilski last year, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit "threw out wholesale" the existing test for software patentability, and substituted a new, stricter one. "The test has teeth," said Tiller, who, as Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, IP for Red Hat, handles incoming patent threats and authored an amicus brief in the case.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Microsoft's suit against TomTom, which alleged infringement of eight of its patents - including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel. I wrote there that this seemed part of a larger attack on Linux, and not just one on TomTom, as Microsoft nonetheless insisted.

Years ago when we started reviewing ASRock motherboards, most of them were fairly basic with very few features compared to what could be found on the ASUS or Gigabyte motherboards. With time though ASRock has begun ramping up their motherboards with more features, new innovative designs, and other improvements that cater towards the desires of enthusiasts and gamers. These days there are ASRock motherboards that can compete with those from major OEMs both in terms of features and in terms of performance, while delivering a better price. One example of a modern, feature-rich ASRock motherboard is the N7AD-SLI. The ASRock N7AD-SLI has NVIDIA SLI support, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394 Firewire, S/PDIF output, OC Tuner, solid capacitors, and an instant boot technology. This motherboard is centered around NVIDIA's nForce 740i SLI Chipset.

My main laptop has been running OpenBSD 4.4 for a few months now, and that laptop has pretty much become my main PC for getting things done both at home and at the office. And I've been quite happy with the stability and performance of the operating system as well as the applications I've installed from packages and ports. My anxiety comes from upgrading. OpenBSD is on a six-month upgrade cycle. Version 4.5 will be out in May. While I've been using OpenBSD off and on since 4.2, I've only done one upgrade, from 4.2 to 4.3, and while it wasn't the most painful experience, neither was it as easy as firing up Synaptic or running apt-get update apt-get upgrade in Debian. Not by a long shot.

Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. Previously we have spoken to Alfred v. Aho of AWK fame, S. Tucker Taft on the Ada 1995 and 2005 revisions, Microsoft about its server-side script engine ASP, Chet Ramey about his experiences maintaining Bash, Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame and to Charles H. Moore about the design and development of Forth. We've also had a chat with the irreverent Don Woods about the development and uses of INTERCAL, as well as Stephen C. Johnson on YACC, Luca Cardelli on Modula-3, Walter Bright on D, Simon Peyton-Jones on Haskell and more recently, Larry Wall, creator of the Perl programming language.

Sure, it's handy being able to run Internet Explorer or Microsoft Office on Linux or the Mac thanks to WINE and Crossover Linux and Mac, but you know what's even cooler? Running WoW (World of Warcraft) or Guild Wars on them. That's why I'm really pleased to see that CrossOver, the company behind WINE, the programs that lets you run Windows programs on Linux and Mac OS, has just released new editions of CrossOver Games for Mac and Linux, version 7.2.0. At first, you might think, "Are they kidding, you can't run -- seriously run -- a demanding Windows game on Linux or the Mac." You'd be wrong.

Vinay Gupta is a Scottish-Indian engineer who designs low-cost homes for poor parts of the world or disaster zones, and then makes them freely available on the internet so others can do the building. His flagship is the Hexayurt shelter system, which costs around $200 (£142). It uses common building materials, including insulation boards - which, he claims, are a third of the cost of a tent. The business plan is to cut the price of essential goods and services to the point where the poor can afford them. Gupta is just one example of a global movement that offers an alternative to the scandalous tales of banking avarice that have saturated the world's media.

In a meeting with financial analysts last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laid out who he thinks are the biggest threats today to Windows on the client side. Surprisingly, Apple wasn't number one. It wasn't number two or three either. Referring to a pie chart at the meeting that gauges threats to Windows, Ballmer said that Windows itself, both licensed and pirated, were the top two threats to Microsoft in the client OS space, followed by Linux, then Apple. Ballmer quipped: "Windows license, number one market share. Number two market share goes to Windows pirated, or unlicensed. That's a competitor that's tough to beat; they've got a good price and a heck of a product, but we're working on it."

Including Dia in this series is just a bit of a stretch, because it is not a conventional “vector graphic editor”. Instead, Dia operates at a somewhat higher level of abstraction. But since that abstraction is very appropriate for dataflow diagrams (such as the one I picked as a comparison project), I think it’s important to note what it can do. Dia is very useful, but it’s sometimes frustrating, because the idea of it suggests expectations well beyond what it can actually do. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine.