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A whole week of success stories for Linux and Open Source, while Microsoft is battling the press, thus the summary from Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. Even the New York Times sees a good positioning for Linux on desktops. Zemlin begins his current blog entry with the words "It is hard for the executive director of the Linux Foundation to feel bad for Microsoft, but they are having a bad week..."

Though it may not be as epically geek as the NetBSD toaster, there is a certain appeal to Chumby, the Linux alarm clock. The hardware and software are open and hackable, for the hands-on type. For the rest of the population, it's still an interesting and functional little device.

In a previous article Linux-Tip explained how to install the current release (Backtrack 3 Final) in a virtual environment using VMWare. The goal was to run Backtrack 3 from the hard disk connected to a Wireless USB Adapter and to use the tool Kismet. It further explains how to collect valid wireless networks and to display them on Google Earth’s worldwide map system. In this article we’ll show how to add Nessus and to use the already integrated SAINT vulnerability scanner and Maltego. We’ll update Fast-Track and will show how to use the web-based interface.

A. Lizard's in-depth howto on setting up secure remote graphical desktops continues with configuring secure Internet access: managing dynamic IP addresses, creating and managing SSH keys, configuring routers, and using Wake-on-LAN for added convenience.

Nearly a year after acquiring MySQL for $1 billion, Sun Microsystems is bolstering its channel partner program to more effectively promote a range of open source solutions. The VAR Guy had been expecting this move for several weeks. Here’s the scoop.

Last month, when the National Center for Open Source and Education announced this year's FOSS and K-12 Education Awards, three of the five awards were given for software designed for the Linux Terminal Service Project (LTSP). Two were given to Eric Harrison and Paul Nelson, the founders of the K12LTSP distribution (now called K-12 Linux). The third was given to Robert Arkiletian, the developer of an administration application called Fl_TeacherTool that is designed specifically for K12LTSP. The award was only the latest acclaim for Fl_TeacherTool, which has a small but dedicated group of users in the classroom. Ironically, though, the award comes at a time when the tiny project faces significant challenges if it is to survive.

Canonical, the developers behind Ubuntu Linux have release Intrepid Ibex, the successor to last spring's Hardy Heron release. Ibex isn't a long-term support release - which might put off some large organizations - but for Ubuntu desktop fans, version 8.10 makes a worthwhile upgrade. If you made the leap to Ubuntu 8.10 when it was released last week you may be scratching your head wondering what the fuss is about. The answer is that it might be a few days before you appreciate the small tweaks and overall streamlining in this release. Naturally, there are a slew of new and updated packages - GNOME 2.24, GIMP 2.6, and more - but much of what we love about 8.10 is more subtle.

Have fun with a lot of reviews - get the overview. So far reviews from Heise Online- and screenshot collections from builder.au - and more reviews from webmonkey, Linuxformat, CRN.com, Polishlinux, Lifehacker, ITWire, LinuxJournal and WorksWithU.

On October 24th, as Lisa reported, a serious vulnerability was discovered in the Google Android powered G1 mobile phone. Though security researchers classified the flaw in the Android browser as serious, Google assured users that the risk wasn't necessarily as dire as it seemed, due to the way the Android operating system restricts each application to its own area.

It's no secret that much of the code-base that makes up the modern-day X.Org server is old and in some places bloated. The X.Org Server continues to evolve and has received a number of major additions in recent times, but wouldn't a clean and lighter server that is designed around today's needs be ideal? Red Hat's Kristian Høgsberg has started a new project, which is currently known as Wayland, and is just that: a new lightweight X Server. Wayland isn't just a rewrite of the current X Server, but instead it's a small server that is designed around some of the latest graphics technologies such as kernel mode-setting and the Graphics Execution Manager. Wayland also has its own built-in compositing manager.

Every *nix type of OS has it's own little logo and a story to go with it. The image accompanying the OpenBSD 4.4 release is a bit different though, with a take on a classic Star Wars poster from 1977.OpenBSD goes a step further with the official song for OpenBSD 4.4 - Trial of the BSD Knights which is hilarious

Backing up data can be difficult, especially when you only want to copy files that changed since the last backup. It can be even more troublesome when you have to remember to start the process manually,or you have to delete old backups to make room for new ones. Because of these difficulties, some people decide not to back up data at all, and feel the pain when they accidentally delete the wrong file or their system crashes. TimeVault is a backup utility for Ubuntu that addresses these problems.

Unveiled earlier this month at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference by Chief Whiteboard Operator Ray Ozzie, the Azure Services Platform confused damn near everyone. But after days of collaboration with the top minds in both industry and academia, El Reg is proud to announce that we have finally figured out what Microsoft Azure is.

This has been a big year for patent law in the technology industry. A few weeks ago I wrote about the Supreme Court's Quanta v. LG decision. Now the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has jurisdiction over all patent appeals, has handed down a landmark ruling in the case of In Re Bilski. The case dealt with the validity of patents on business methods, and a number of public interest organizations had filed amicus briefs. I offer my take on the decision in a story for Ars Technica. In a nutshell, the Federal Circuit rejected the patent application at issue in the case and signaled a newfound skepticism of "business method" patents.

Have you tried the major Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora/RHEL, and OpenSUSE/SLED? Were they not quite right for your needs? The major distros are not the only game in town. Find out the good, the bad, and the ugly about three of the best-known alternatives to the "big" user distros.

This is potentially a more time consuming backport but with Xen 3.3 being a huge improvement over 3.2 it would definitely help Ubuntu server market share to have Xen 3.3 available in Ubuntu 8.04. Many server operators will want Xen 3.3 but will want to continue running the LTS release rather than upgrade to Intrepid.

Halloween came and went last week, and we have yet to hear from anyone who wore a Tux costume. Sigh -- looks like we'll have to wait another year. Generating much more excitement than the spooky Linuxy possibilities, it seems, was the grand landing of Intrepid Ibex, which caused a veritable flurry of reviews, comparisons and general Ubuntu-related discussion.

Phoronix Media has announced the immediate availability of its Q4'08 update to the Phoronix Test Suite, its extensible open-source platform for conducting automated testing and benchmarking by ISVs, IHVs, ODMs, OEMs, and end-users. Phoronix Test Suite 1.4 (codenamed "Orkdal") adds support for Apple's Mac OS X operating system, new test profiles, support for Cascading Test Profiles, enhanced software/hardware detection, WINE-based tests, and run-time capabilities for Self-Contained Test Profiles. This quarterly update to the Phoronix Test Suite has more than 200 changes since the Phoronix Test Suite 1.2 "Malvik" release in September.

In this tutorial, I will guide you through the necessary steps to install an ipw3945 wireless adapter on a CentOS / RHEL based distribution. It is written for CentOS 5.2. However, it might work on other CentOS 5.x based distributions as well.

IP aliasing is the process of adding more than one IP address to a network interface. This is useful for virtual hosting of Web or ftp servers. This tuorial explains how to assign two more IP address to a single network interface under FreeBSD operating system.