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Newcomers to open source software might be intimidated by the insider nature of the communities, but they shouldn't mistake that for elitism, writes LinuxInsider columnist Jeremiah T. Gray. Stick with it, and the benefits will become clear, he advises.

I interview Jono Bacon (Ubuntu Community Manager) about the demise of Lugradio, Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex and his musical pursuits. Part 2 of 3 from Ohio Linuxfest 2008.

Sir William Blackstone famously said the Royal Navy was something along the lines of being England's "ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island." But then there weren't many computer viruses around in the 18th century.

P2P (peer-to-peer) is the nature of the Net. You can fight that, or you can embrace it. Here in the US, the mainstream entertainment business has mostly been fighting it. Hollywood and its phone and cable company allies have long regarded P2P, and BitTorrent in particular, as a copyright piracy system and a bandwidth hog. In the European Union, however, P2P is more than accepted: it's supported by the Union itself.

Python has a good reputation for tasks like systems programming, network programming, and scripting, but Python for the web is becoming red hot. Part of this has to do with the very popular web framework Django, that was developed at a newspaper to help quickly create Content Management Sites. . Another reason is that Google App Engine–Google’s Cloud Computing offering for developers–only exposes a Python API.

When it was just a one-guy operation, The HeliOS Project was able to take care of most inquiries and visitors via a blog. Things for The HeliOS Project have changed and they’ve done so quickly. With 4 additional directors named to the organization, The HeliOS Project seems poised to do some good things in the coming year. Now, people wanting to know more or wanting to help them do what they do, have a new website to visit.

In late 2005 we looked at the ATP ToughDrive 1GB flash drive and in 2006 looked at ATP's ProMax 150x CF card, but since then we haven't heard much from this company. However, they have recently released two new products, which we are looking at today. There is the ATP 8GB EarthDrive, which is advertised as the world's first recyclable USB drive, and secondly there is the ATP 8GB ToughDrive. The EarthDrive is made of a biodegradable material that is derived from corn.

This guide explains how you can convert physical systems (running Debian Etch) or Xen domUs (also running Debian Etch) into an OpenVZ container. This procedure should also work for converting VMware VMs, VirtualBox VMs, or KVM VMs into OpenVZ containers, but I haven't tried this. It should work for other Linux distributions as well, with minor modifications (for example, the network configuration is not located in /etc/network/interfaces if you're not on Debian/Ubuntu).

Are rumors of Sun's demise greatly exaggerated? Maybe so, if the company's open-source storage strategy is any indication. Sun has struggled for years to shed its image as an old-school IT dinosaur. Lately, with the economy tanking and Sun's stock price tagging along for the ride, its quest for profitability looks more than ever like an exercise in futility.

If you are writing a software which exposes APIs to be used by a third party, then first thing you have to do is to make sure that all the integers parameters have been validated. Every incoming value to your function should be considered as tainted.

Russell Coker is not a man who sleeps with his computers. But he does come pretty close - two servers are positioned in a little cabinet in his bedroom, one being his server and the other his Security Enhanced Linux "play machine." The play machine is open to anyone to log in and try to break the security. The root password is out in public - this is one of the many ways in which he engages with the wider FOSS community and a way by which he tried to improve what has become the project to which he devotes a considerable amount of time.

Last week I had the privilege to chat via IM with Orv Beach, the Publicity Chair for the Southern California Linux Expo, about how SCALE uses FLOSS to productively plan and implement their event. SCALE is currently one of the biggest Linux conferences in the US…but I’ll let Orv fill you in on rest. This year’s Expo will be February 20th - 22nd, 2009. Find out more at the official website.

This summary made sense at digit saucer in time - I mean, this summary made sense at some point in time ;)

People often wonder how to get new capabilities—new packages, new features in existing packages, or even bug fixes—included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The process for doing so is straightforward, but may be foreign to those with a background in traditional software products.

Continuing my holiday machine maintenance saga I move on to some notable trials and tribulations with Ubuntu, but not before I report on a little more holiday cheer.

Ubiquity is a very popular Firefox extension that adds a flexible natural language command line to Firefox, and is developed by the folks at Mozilla. It's now out in a more useful new version, with a sleeker look, a more stable core, and the ability to create good looking skins. If you're familiar with using the Awesome Bar in Firefox, you'll take to Ubiquity quickly, although it pays to spend a little time learning how its commands work. Here's a peek at the new version.

The biggest winner in terms of what cloud service open source developers plan to use is Google's App Engine at 28 percent of respondents. Amazon came in second at 15 percent.

WiFi encryption has just got even less secure now that the Russians reckon you can crack WPA and WPA2 passwords with both ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards.

Free office solution OpenOffice.org is still in the best of shape, based on reactions from project members to Novell developer Michael Meeks's recent pessimistic view. The Linux Foundation is one of many who are concerned. All want one thing: more.

There was a big fuss earlier this week when The Sunday Times of London published an article claiming that every Google search was the equivalent of boiling a pot of tea. Turned out it was a tempest in a tea pot. The Times attributed this bit of profundity to a prestigious Harvard University physicist named Alex Wissner-Gross, who is working on research on the environmental impact of computing.