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Have you tried lately to figure out which Linux operating system you’d like to use? And, did you think about adding a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) device to that Linux system? We can guess that you probably overwhelmed with the choices available to VoIP users today. In fact, to write a truly definitive guide to VoIP for Linux users, we would need to write a book. Instead, we combed the online Linux and VoIP Wikis to find the most-used combinations of Linux and VoIP according to the systems and devices that were most talked about on these support and documentation pages. Those choices, listed below along with their Wikis, will provide you with a definitive guide to choices available, and to the choices that provide the most documentation for ease of use.

This week HP announced the Envy 133 and details surfaced surrounding the Dell E and E Slim. These new notebooks from HP and Dell will each ship with an embedded Linux environment, which the manufacturers have dubbed Voodoo IOS and BlackTop, respectively. Both Linux environments appear to be quite similar in concept and similar to the instant-on SplashTop environment for notebooks, PCs, and motherboards, which DeviceVM Inc had pioneered and then ultimately introduced last year. In this article we have more information on HP's Voodoo IOS and Dell's BlackTop and whether they're actually using SplashTop for powering the system or have developed their own proprietary distributions.

Beta version of PDF import extension for OpenOffice.org is now available online. Fully functional version, special features like importing layout of LaTeX PDF or import of complex vector graphics, will appear later. The preliminary version of this extension allows to open and edit PDF documents up to version 1.4.

Opera Software released a security-conscious version of its freely-available web browser that adds protection against malware. Opera 9.5 also adds a faster browser engine, a clean-cut new interface, and synchronization features that keep the browser in line with the Opera Mini mobile browser, the vendor says.

A bash script to find all prime numbers up to a user-specified ceiling.

e107 is a content management system written in PHP and using the popular open source MySQL database system for content storage. It's completely free, totally customisable and in constant development.

On UNIX systems, each system and end-user task is contained within a process. The system creates new processes all the time and processes die when a task finishes or something unexpected happens. In Part 8 learn how to control processes in UNIX and use a number of commands to peer into your system.

Open source is more than a marketing buzzword -- it is a developer state of mind delivering real returns to companies and the broader market, writes Dave McAllister, director of standards and open source for Adobe Systems.

This weekend, the One Laptop per Child movement in New York City is holding an OLPC "Grassroots Jam" at the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. The Jam is a gathering of volunteer educators, content creators, artists, writers, programmers, engineers, and others who want to help create a central server for NYC schools that already make use of OLPC laptops. According to LXNY secretary Jay Sulzberger, the server will provide "automatic backups, end-to-end encryption and authentication of email, extra processing power for individual and group tasks, convenient Bitfrosting (working with the default OLPC security platform), and [working] with programs which today do not yet run on the XO-1 [laptop]."

Sabayon Linux today announced that it will partner with NetCraft Communications, a global provider of computer infrastructure management services and makers of Versiera, Remote System Management and Monitoring Software. As part of this strategic alliance, both companies will leverage their technologies, including Sabayon Entropy to provide broader software distribution methods.

Of all the community distributions, probably the least known is openSUSE. After two and a half years, the distro is not only still working out details about how its community operates -- including how its governing board is elected -- but also struggling to come out of the shadow of its corporate parent Novell, much as Fedora has emerged from its initial dominance by Red Hat. With the pending release of openSUSE 11.0, community manager Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier suggests that the distribution is finally starting to get the recognition it deserves. In the middle of preparations for the new release, Brockmeier took the time to talk with Linux.com about the priorities within the community and its relation with the larger world of free software.

Now that I have a working Slackware installation on my test box, which has seen Slackware before, everything is working so well that I'm reluctant to install one of the GNOME add-on projects just yet.

eBox is a server framework and platform that allows administrators to set up network services such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) or a firewall from scratch relatively easily. eBox does not offer management of every option found in all service configuration files. Instead, it focuses on managing network-centric services and messaging applications easy by offering a single Web GUI portal. In addition, eBox can be extended by programmers who wish to add other services and management modules of their own.

If you take a gander at the number of Linux distributions listed at Distrowatch, you'll find there are tons of "forks" and "offshoots" from one distribution to another. With Linux, we have the freedom to do that, but I'm curious if there are any Linux flavors that are truly offensive to people. There has been some controversial uprisings in the past, but it begs the questions -- does the freedom to fork ever cross over into creepville?

The open source community was bitterly disappointed today after the UK appointed an unknown consultancy to run an historic programme of advocacy in schools. International big hitters had piled behind UK open source houses bidding for a Becta contract to set up an open source community in the schools sector. It was seen as a breakthrough - an indication that convicted monopolist Microsoft was losing its grip on the sector. But Becta gave the open source community an almighty slap in the face when it turned down their three bids and awarded the business to a consultancy with no links to the open source community, said representatives of the community.

Open-source developers targeting the mobile space need to learn business rules including digital rights management, Nokia's software chief has claimed. Speaking at the Handsets World conference in Berlin on Tuesday, Dr Ari Jaaksi told delegates that the open-source community needed to be 'educated' in the way the mobile industry currently works, because the industry has not yet moved beyond old business models.

A small, light laptop makes an excellent second computer -- unless it costs more than your first. The computer industry has been taking its time to grasp that point. The smallest, lightest computers have routinely sold for $2,000 or more, with most under-$1,000 offerings limited to heavy, bulky laptops that can't stray far from a desk or a power outlet. (Dell has one under-five-pound machine that starts at $1,000.)

In the field of penetration testing, BackTrack is today's premier Linux distribution. Designed for, created by, and used by security professionals around the globe, BackTrack is the result of a merger between two earlier, competing distributions -- WHAX and Auditor Security Collection. The most recent beta version was released on June 10. BackTrack 3.0 beta (BT3) is showing up in a lot of places these days. There was a presentation in February at ShmooCon, an annual hacker convention. At this year's National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC), it was the distro of choice for the Red Team -- the attackers -- made up of experienced security professionals.

KTorrent is definitely the most full-featured BitTorrent client for KDE. It is complete by any means and highly configurable, offering, among many other: search capabilities (with the results opened in a new tab and the possibility to add custom search sites), the possibility to create torrent files, pause/resume torrent downloading, system tray integration, detailed information about the torrents it downloads, a queue manager, various useful plugins. KTorrent has come to be probably the most complete BitTorrent client out there, being also fast and having an option to use low CPU resources.

Sun has made good on its promise to deliver OpenSolaris, the company's Unix-based answer to Linux, with a company-supported, commercial update arriving in mid-May. Although far from a complete product, the latest OpenSolaris is impressive and in the long run could prove a viable alternative to Linux. Part of OpenSolaris' appeal is that it contains a subset of the source code for the Solaris Operating System, but with an open source license. Among the familiar Sun features are the enviable DTrace tuning and monitoring tool and the ever-impressive ZFS filesystem, neither of which are likely to make it to Linux due to licensing and personality conflicts.