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It wasn't that long ago that it was impossible to find good, free open source tools for working with and viewing video. Now that video runs rampant on the web, though, there are a whole lot of applications worth getting, even if you're currently happy with your video and encoding tools. Here are eight good applications to try.

Once upon a time, a Linux distribution would be installed with a /dev directory fully populated with device files. Most of them represented hardware which would never be present on the installed system, but they needed to be there just in case. Toward the end of this era, it was not uncommon to find systems with around 20,000 special files in /dev, and the number continued to grow. This scheme was unwieldy at best, and the growing number of hotpluggable devices (and devices in general) threatened to make the whole structure collapse under its own weight. Something, clearly, needed to be done.

Two years ago, Microsoft Corp. agreed to buy $240 million worth of support vouchers for Novell Inc.'s SUSE Linux operating system as part of a controversial partnership deal between the two vendors. Now Microsoft is reaching into its pocket again, to the tune of another $100 million. The once-bitter rivals -- which are still facing off against each other in an antitrust lawsuit that Novell filed in 2004 -- jointly announced last week that Microsoft has committed to purchase up to $100 million worth of additional support vouchers from Novell, starting Nov. 1.

This week's start-off Linux/Unix bash shell script is a follow up to our previous online dictionary shell script and Thesaurus shell script. I was thinking of doing the online Encyclopedia today, but, for some reason, I got sidetracked on The BabelFish Language Translation Site. This script offers the full functionality of the original website's text translation, except I left out the HTML page translation part. I figure if you're going to translate an entire webpage, it would look a lot nicer using a regular web browser ;)

Over the past three months, I've been communicating at length with several leaders in the Open Source Software (OSS) community about how best to license software patents in a way that supports the goal of OSS developers, users, and distributors. I've learned a great deal along the way about the uneasy relationship between OSS and software patents.

OpenVAS, Open Bulnerability Assessment Server is a free opensource vulnerability assessment software released under GNU GPL lincese. OpenVAS is a fork of Nessus Vulnerability assessment software. Similar to the Plugin sets in Nessus, OpenVAS provides free Network Vulnerability Tests plugins that can be updated regularly.

At this point we've seen a ton of Dell's upcoming Inspiron 910 / Mini Inspiron, but until this thing hits the street for real it looks like our pal Mr. Blurrycam has a new favorite target. Here's the 8.9-inch netbook testing Ubuntu somewhere, with a far less ugly keyboard than last time -- maybe next time it'll sprout some function keys.

LXer Feature: 24-Aug-2008

This week we have Anti-Linux sites to follow, old flame wars, scientific software for Linux, Microsoft and Novell renew their pact, Microsoft attempts to save face with Vista advertising campaign, Linux myths debunked and I wrap it all up with a really bad patch cable and a nice nugget of FUD.

The Linux 2.6.26 kernel had featured updated Intel and ATI DRM that added the needed kernel support for the ATI R500 and Intel GMA 4500 3D support. While the merge window for the Linux 2.6.27 kernel has already closed, we will hopefully see a few more Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) patches. We've already seen DRM file restructuring early on in the 2.6.27 cycle, but David Airlie has requested Linus Torvalds incorporate a few additional patches.

Need a quick reference card? Here you have a list with the best cheat-sheets for Linux, Screen, VIM, Firefox, Google and so on.

Not long after Joichi Ito uploaded a photo he had taken of Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia last year, he noticed something odd. Most of the Internet luminaries and technology gurus who had write-ups on Wikipedia had poor-quality photos or none at all. It wasn't just that."I realized that some famous people have no free photos online," says Ito.

Earlier this week with the release of the Catalyst 8.8 driver we were first to deliver Linux CrossFire benchmarks for the Radeon HD 4800 series along with the first OverDrive for Linux article. With our initial CrossFire for Linux article we had delivered benchmarks from the Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870, now though we are delivering the first Radeon HD 4870 X2 benchmarks under Ubuntu Linux. In this article we have our hands on the VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB graphics card.

This article explains how you can install and configure apache2-mpm-peruser on a Debian Etch server. apache2-mpm-peruser is an MPM (Multi-Processing Module) for the Apache 2 web server, very similar to apache2-mpm-itk, but faster (almost as fast as apache2-mpm-prefork). mpm-peruser allows you to run each of your vhosts under a separate UID and GID - in short, the scripts and configuration files for one vhost no longer have to be readable for all the other vhosts. It is based on metuxmpm, a working implementation of the perchild MPM. The result is a sane and secure web server environment for your users, without kludges like PHP's safe_mode.

We all know that Linux is about choice. Everyone has the choice of what they use and how they use it, provided they have access to a tame hacker with suitable programming skills. A consequence of this is that there's a huge range of software out there. If there's a popular favourite for a given task, you can bet your bottom dollar there'll be at least one alternative. You've only to look at the package selection options in most distro installers to see just how many choices you can make before you even start using your distribution.

A French robotics start-up called Wany Robotics has announced two mobile, mini-ITX-based sensor robots that run Linux. Aimed at educational and R&D applications, the PeKeeII robots are based on Via C3 or Intel Core 2 Duo processors, and offer sensor telemetry, ultrasound, and laser detection. Wany offers "Advanced" and "Ultimate" robots, both of which are built atop the same "Essential" PeKeeII model. Supplied without an onboard computer or OS, the Essential model is equipped with dual 12V DC motors running off of a 12V 7A/h NiMh battery. It has two odometers, 360-degree bumpers, and light and temperature sensors.

Opera Software has patched seven vulnerabilities in its flagship Opera browser, but declined to provide information about one of the bugs. The Norwegian browser developer hinted that other programs, not yet unpatched, were also affected by the flaw. Wednesday's update to Opera 9.52 fixes multiple bugs - seven in the Windows version, five in the Mac edition and six in the Linux browser - that range from "extremely severe" to "not severe" in the company's five-step threat ranking system.

Fedora has admitted Red Hat OpenSSH packages were compromised by two separate server intrusions. A week late and leaving the FOSS reputation for timely disclosure in tatters.

For this Sunday's Linux and Unix humor break, I found this dated (yet still relevant) joke on the net and, not being able to believe I found it, downloaded the page immediately. This morning, when I woke up, I checked again and the page where I found the Hacker Test actually does exist! This is important because, when you don't sleep regularly, reality may or may not be valid. Just because something happens to me in the middle of the "day" doesn't mean I'm not dreaming ;) Check out the rest of the long list of jokes and Susan Stepney's web site. It's a great collection of information. Fun, entertaining and informative. I don't know Susan personally, but I dig her site and wish her the best. At the very least, check out the jokes. There are plenty of goods ones to be found there. The world needs more educators with a sense of humor :)

The Nessus vulnerability scanner, is the world-leader in active scanners, featuring high speed discovery, configuration auditing, asset profiling, sensitive data discovery and vulnerability analysis of your security posture. Nessus scanners can be distributed throughout an entire enterprise, inside DMZs, and across physically separate networks. Nessus can also be used for ad-hoc scanning, daily scans, and quick-response audits.

Microsoft has dropped another ton or three of cash on Novell and in celebration they issued a joint press release announcing this new phase of their relationship. I was never a fan of the original deal, feeling that it violated the spirit if not the letter of the GPL. Some purport that it has increased the usage of Linux in the enterprise; that's a claim for which I don't have the numbers to verify or debunk. Honestly, I sort of doubt much of anyone really does.