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For many years Spamhaus has been top dog in the anti-spam world of DNSBL (Domain Name System Block List; also known as Realtime Blackhole Lists or RBLs). But Spamhaus is no longer a 100% free service. Even small nonprofits are now expected to pay at least $250 per year for a subscription to the Spamhaus DNSBL Datafeed Service. Now a new, free alternative to Spamhaus has arrived: the Barracuda Reputation Block List (BRBL), provided by well-known, open source-based Barracuda Networks. And Barracuda CEO Dean Drako says the company has no plans to charge for the service in the future. He says that BRBL (pronounced "barbell") "does cost us a little bit of money to run, but we think that the goodwill, the reputation and the understanding that Barracuda is providing the service will do us well in the long run."

Howto set up a Wireless Bridge in Debian. A wireless router is great when toting a computer with a wireless interface around, but moving a wired computer to another room or floor often means stringing an unsightly Ethernet cable through the house. The alternative is buying a wireless adapter, hoping that a Linux driver is available for it (there often isn’t). Even a wireless interface is no good when used out of range of the wireless router.

What role does the Internet Explorer Web browser play in your life? In recent days, new vulnerabilities in the flagship Windows browser have come to light. Alas, the fix is in, but pundits continue to suggest that running IE is just asking for trouble. I'm not ready to say IE is such a security risk that instead browsing the Web with Firefox, Google's new Chrome, the super-quick Opera or even Apple's cross-platform Safari is enough to save your digital bacon. Nope, it's all about what you do, where you go and what computing platform you choose to do it with. The fast is that i386-based Windows PCs continue to be the most vulnerable platforms out there because of both their ubiquity and relative lack of built-in security when compared to Macintosh OS X and the vast number of Unix-like OSes out there (including Linux, the BSDs and Sun's offerings). If you make a habit of downloading executable files (they're easy to spot in Windows because they end in .exe) without being absolutely sure they're totally legitimate and then double-clicking on them, bad things may very well happen.

The sysrq key sits quietly at the top of your keyboard, usually sharing space with PrntScrn. sysrq is a direct hotline to the kernel and gets you out of trouble when your system is getting tangled up in itself; Juliet Kemp shows how.

Low-level optimization of performance-critical code can be a challenging task. At this point, one assumes, the potential for algorithmic improvements in the targeted code has been realized; what is left is trying to locate and address problems like cache misses, mis-predicted branches, and so on. Such problems can be impossible to find by just looking at the code; one needs support from the hardware. The good news is that contemporary hardware provides that support; most processors can collect a wide range of performance data for analysis. The bad news is that, despite the fact that processors have been able to collect that data for many years, there has never been support for this kind of performance monitoring in the mainline kernel. That situation may be about to change, but, first, the development community will have to make a choice between a venerable out-of-tree implementation and an unexpected competitor.

Novell Inc.'s openSUSE project is becoming more open, as a new release due out Thursday includes licensing changes that make it easier to redistribute the Linux operating system, as well as a build service that will encourage more contributions from open-source developers. OpenSUSE previously used a standard user license agreement and contained some proprietary software -- namely Adobe Acrobat and Sun Java -- that made it difficult to redistribute the open-source software, says Joe Brockmeier, Novell's openSUSE community manager. OpenSUSE 11.1, the release that will be announced Thursday, modifies the license to eliminate some of the legal headaches and removes the proprietary software, which now must be downloaded separately.

eRacks Open Source Systems has introduced a new desktop model that uses the recently-released Intel (News - Alert) Core i7 processor. The Core i7 processor from Intel is the first member of a new family of Nehalem processor designs and is equipped with new technologies that boost performance on demand and maximize data throughput. The Core i7 processor speeds video editing, immersive games and other popular Internet and computer activities by up to 40 percent without increasing power consumption.

Debian developer Josselin Mouette has had his privileges of posting to the announcement mailing list for developers withdrawn, following an offensive post to the list in November. Debian Project Leader Steve McIntyre told iTWire that after Mouette's "abuse of the ability to post to the d-d-a mailing list, I asked our mailing list administrators to remove that privilege for in future." Following the post on November 23, at least two Debian women developers indicated they were reconsidering their participation in GNU/Linux project.

[Looks like it finally got the attention of the brass at Debian. - Scott]

We are pleased to announce you the launch, by January ‘09, of a world wide Mandriva Community Steering Committee whose main targets will be to: Unify and leverage the Mandriva Community and Ecosystem, thus aligning joint efforts towards clear goals. Provide a better visibility on products releases. And last but not least, establishing a key milestone on the road to success.

This week's feature article shows keen Linux users how to make the most of their computer by performing a custom install for a leaner and faster system - in this case we build a custom Ubuntu 8.10. In the news section, openSUSE prepares for the imminent release of version 11.1, Debian announces the upcoming second and final release candidate of the Debian installer, the Unofficial Fedora FAQ updates its HOWTOs for the recently released Fedora 10, the University of Glasgow settles on Slackware Linux for its log-in server, Spain's Trisquel is added to GNU's free distribution list, and Chile's Educalibre gets Tuquito Linux running on Intel Classmate netbooks. We also have links to two interesting interviews - one with Timothy Cramer from OpenSolaris and the other with Warren Woodford of MEPIS Linux. Finally, if you are still searching for that elusive minimalist Linux system that would run smoothly on any old computer, take a look at Tiny Core Linux - a desktop distro in 11 MB.

If you haven't yet tried Puppy Linux, here are five reasons why this little gem deserves a closer look.

Sun has updated its "open source" desktop virtualization software. xVM VirtualBox 2.1 reportedly features improved 64-bit support, 3D acceleration, easier Windows and Linux networking, hardware virtualization on Macs, and "full" VMDK/VHD support, including snapshots, although many new features are "experimental."

Hi All, Here's the 22nd tip in the "OpenLDAP Quick Tips" series: "You are not sure what type of OpenLDAP replication to use, but you know you need to".

Another year gone, and Blizzard's World of Warcraft remains the unrivaled champion of the massive multiplayer online (MMO) genre, and - in many ways - PC gaming in general. At its feet lay 2008's pile of would-be "WoW-killers" left charred, battered, and wondering what Blizzard's four-year-old creation has that they lack.

No Apple at MacWorld? What's a Mac addict to do? There's always OpenSource World.

Linux has a special mount option for file systems called noatime. If this option is set for a file system in /etc/fstab, then reading accesses will no longer cause the atime information (last access time - don't mix this up with the last modified time - if a file is changed, the modification date will still be set) that is associated with a file to be updated (in reverse this means that if noatime is not set, each read access will also result in a write operation). Therefore, using noatime can lead to significant performance gains.

Novell is generating buzz with the Dec. 18 launch of OpenSUSE 11.1. But The VAR Guy is looking at Novell from a slightly different perspective. The far bigger news involves senior VP Roger Levy — who may bring order to Novell’s multiple, seemingly unrelated product lines. Here’s the scoop, from The VAR Guy

If Parkinson's Law for computers holds true, then no matter how much disk space you have, it will get used up. If you're already feeling a pinch, consider using a disk space analyzer tool to see what's eating your space.

Most of hard-core Linux admins encountered hardware RAIDs and know what pain they could be to maintain and configure properly. Usually, you have to download some sort of proprietary CLI or GUI tool from vendor's website, learn it, try to understand its commands and, finally, use it to configure RAID or check its status. Einarc is a solution for all this hassle: it's a universal storage RAID command line interface and an API that provides management for various hardware/software RAID devices.

Contrary to some recent reports, senior managers at Acer and other leading vendors have confirmed that Microsoft Windows XP now dominates the emerging sub-notebook market with more than 90% of new sales. Meanwhile, Linux, which had the netbooks market to itself until April this year, has seen its share of the space eroded to less than 10% in a breath-taking decline.