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As a computer journalist for the last 25 years, I've received a lot of review copies of software. As something of an obsessive magpie, I've tended to keep most of it, “for reference”. Until yesterday, that is, when I finally threw out all those copies of OS/2, Lotus SmartSuite, and my entire collection of Microsoft software. This included Windows NT 3.5, Windows 2000, Microsoft Office and many, many more. What's makes this little spring-cleaning exercise particularly apt as well as cathartic is that all of us - and not just me - may finally be witnessing the end of the Windows era.

Dell yesterday announced a brand new range of laptops ranging from ultra-portables to high-end desktop replacement machines. The really interesting news for Linux fans, however, was Dell’s new “Latitude ON” system which allows for almost instant-on booting when you want to check an email or something on the Internet without booting the entire operating system.

Our open source expert foresees the future of Linux: By 2012 the OS will have matured into three basic usage models. Web-based apps rule, virtualization is a breeze, and command-line hacking for basic system configuration is a thing of the past.

LXer Feature: 15-Aug-2008

In many ways the virtues that have brought Linux from a Unix look alike pet project to a competitive operating system are the same as the ideals behind DefCon. The community stood on each other's shoulders and developed piece after piece of software to fill in the gaps that were found through use. Programmer's built on the ideas of others creating tighter and tighter code to support an increasingly complex framework. Originally that was the theme of this article when I had begun thinking about writing it. The things that I saw at DefCon were every bit of the ideals I went up there to find and more...

It is common for the open source community to be called upon by vendors--including proprietary vendors--to be beta testers for Linux releases, according to an industry player. Peter Cheng, open source evangelist and founder of an open source services provider company in China, told ZDNet Asia the practice of recruiting Linux testers is common among Web 2.0 companies.

This article explains how you can install and configure apache2-mpm-itk on a Debian Etch server. apache2-mpm-itk is an MPM (Multi-Processing Module) for the Apache 2 web server. mpm-itk allows you to run each of your vhost 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. mpm-itk works with mod_php because mpm-itk is based on the traditional prefork MPM, which means it is non-threaded. This means you do not need to use suExec or suPHP anymore to run a website's PHP scripts as a separate user.

Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, says he's fed up with what he sees as a "security circus" surrounding software vulnerabilities and how they're hyped by security people. Torvalds explained his position in an e-mail exchange with Network World this week. He also expanded on critical comments he made last month that caused a stir in the IT industry.

There are many cases when after looking at some of the FAQ on the web you ask yourself: “Are they for real? Who asks those questions anyway?” Questions like: “How Does Linux Kernel Versioning Work?” or “How much does Ubuntu cost?” don’t really provide you with the information you need. Mainly because they target a very specific kind of users. On the other hand there are many really helpful FAQ, some of them were used in preparing this article. I also wondered around many forums collecting questions that real people ask frequently. The target of those questions are mainly Ubuntu users, who came from a Windows world and use it for about a week or two. Here are some of my findings. I hope they will actually help someone.

A federal judge in the United States has ruled that an open source license should have the same legal enforceability as traditional copyright.

With LinuxWorld showcasing the popularity of the open source operating system, and with open source in general finding its legs in the enterprise, Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and standards, made a slate of predictions for Linux and open source during his keynote address on Wednesday at the Black Hat conference.

OpenOffice Writer starts in about five seconds in Debian Lenny on my Gateway Solo 1450, and I have to think the preload app is responsible. I've written before about how preload doesn't seem to have any effect on Iceweasel and Epiphany, which I'd sure like to start more quickly, but with OpenOffice, preload seems to be doing its job.

How not to crash your Solaris machine using savecore on an encapsulated root disk.

The computing industry is familiar with the low-cost lab known as the garage, a historic hot-bed for innovation, and this week LinuxWorld had its own "garage" to showcase embedded Linux. From a wirelessly controlled Lego robot to a device designed to aid information sharing in third-world countries, a number of small vendors and independent thinkers were on hand to showcase the possibilities inherent in embedded Linux.

ISO Master which is claimed to be the best ISO editing tool is a graphical editor for ISO images. ISO Master is useful for extracting, deleting, or adding files and directories to or from an ISO image. ISO Master can read .ISO files (ISO9660, Joliet, RockRidge, and El Torito), most .NRG files, and some single-track .MDF files and can save and only save as .ISO.

Would you believe a major software vendor released a patch for their flagship program that made it impossible to run their software? Believe it. That's exactly what happened with VMware. On August 12th, users throughout the U.S. tried to turn on their ESX 3.5 Update 2 and ESXi Server 3.5 Update 2 hypervisors and ... were told that their VMware licenses had expired. That's always a great way to win friends and influence software license sales.

Guvnor is the business rules management system in Drools 5. When you deploy it out of the box, you get an unsecured web application that stores data in Jackrabbit’s embedded Derby database. This two-part article explains how to tune Guvnor deployed on JBoss Application Server 4.2.3. (If you missed the first half of the series, catch up in our archives.)This means that we will use the container’s configuration files and security infrastructure. This installment covers enabling password validation based on an OpenLDAP server, moving from the default data repository, and enabling SSL for better security.

Sun Microsystems has open sourced its Java toolkit for building mobile applications just as the role Java plays on handsets comes into question. The company has released the Light-Weight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) under a GPLv2 license with a classpath exception - for binary linking with an application - as an incubator project to Java.net. Fixes to LWUIT from Sun will be posted to the repository.

The following is a follow-up to the Slackware WPA-PSK HOWTO, describing the way to configure the HP 530 laptop, Slackware 12.1 OS and a Lantech wireless access-point router using WPA2 encryption method. It might be however tuned up to match other router/distro combinations.

Open source is about a lot more than just Linux, though open source software vendors can learn a lot from the success of Linux. That's where open source database vendor EnterpriseDB is headed with its new CEO Ed Boyajian, who was recruited out of Linux leader Red Hat in June. In an interview with InternetNews.com, Boyajian explained how the lessons learned from Red Hat about growing an open source business can be used to grow an open source database business as well.

This video is fromnuvalo who writes: "This is the latest kernel from Wii-Linux, which supports USB, Bluetooth, etc. This video shows how it boots T2 SDE for PowerPC, with its X server and the login. The colors are messed up as the X server writes its colors in RGB format, and the Wii frame buffer only supports yuv2. Anyway, it is possible to run an X server without too much effort."