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This document describes how to set up PHPlist on Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian. This howto should also work for other distributions with little modifications. Taken from the phplist page: "phplist is an open-source newsletter manager. phplist is free to download, install and use, and is easy to integrate with any website. phplist is downloaded more than 10 000 times per month and is listed in the top open source projects for vitality score on Freshmeat."

A look at yet another quick and simple Perl command line execution statement that you can use to save yourself lots of time...

I can hardly believe that I'm composing an entry in Movable Type Open Source 4.1 using Damn Small Linux. Now that version 4.3 of the low-spec Linux distribution has added Firefox 2 to its software mix, I can use the browser -- here named Bon Echo for reasons that escape me -- for many more things than I could the Firefox 1.06 browser included in previous incarnations of DSL.

Many hex editors try to copy an entire file into memory before they let you edit it, which explicitly limits the size of the files you can view or edit. lfhex is designed to allow you to edit binary files larger than can fit into your computer's memory. While you might normally not be working with binary files that are larger than your memory, it's good to know that your hex editor can scale to such large files when that situation arises. lfhex can load huge files quickly and does not require large amounts of memory to do so. For example, the documentation mentions that loading a 2GB file requires less than 2MB of RAM.

I've blogged a bit recently on how hard it is to install Movable Type and have it actually work on your own server. After getting and configuring Apache and MySQL (or PostgreSQL or SQlite), making sure you get the static files in the right place and the CGI/Perl files in the other right place, then making sure everything has the proper permissions ... I found it to be way beyond my capabilities. To be fair, I haven't yet tried to install WordPress, but I recently found out something very interesting: There are WordPress packages available in many of the major Linux and BSD distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu and even OpenBSD. Luckily, the same thing is now happening for Movable Type. So if you're using the Debian GNU/Linux distribution -- and I strongly suggest you do -- you can now install Movable Type as a Debian package.

Why would anyone try to introduce an operating system into the existing glut unless it pays off in spades? What can a new entrant give us that the multitude of Linux distributions, the Mac OSX and old, hoary Windows hasn't?

The AMD 780 Series Chipsets have been available for nearly four months now, and supporting the Radeon HD 3200 graphics since day one has been AMD's proprietary Catalyst driver. On the open-source side, there has been the Radeon HD 3200 / 780G support quite quickly through the xf86-video-ati driver due to its use of AtomBIOS, but the support within the RadeonHD driver hadn't arrived until earlier today. Thanks to 22 code commits made to the mainline xf86-video-radeonhd git tree, it's now possible to use this newest AMD integrated graphics processor with this Novell-spawned driver.

In this video interview Open Source Initiative co-founder Bruce Perens talks to German Linux-Magazin Online. He discusses Open Source licensing and the characteristics of individual licenses such as GPLv2, GPLv3, BSD, Apache and Affero GPL. Besides that he reveals an interesting feature he develops for his Blog technocrat.net and why Debian releases have such funny names. Although this is a German website the video interview is in English.

Recently, I wrote a review of the note-taking application Tomboy. Though I find Tomboy exceptionally useful, I had a minor issue with the inability to create new notebooks from within a note. Within hours of the review appearing on Linux.com, Boyd Timothy, one of the app's developers mentioned in the article's comments that my idea had merit and said he would add the feature to an upcoming build. True to his word, he did. This is a shining example of one of the most valued yet sometimes overlooked features of open source software: it really is for the people, by the people.

It is fair to say that distributed source code management systems are taking over the world. There are plenty of centralized systems still in use, but it is a rare project which would choose to adopt a centralized SCM in 2008. Developers have gotten too used to the idea that they can carry the entire history of their project on their laptop, make their changes, and merge with others at their leisure. But, while any developer can now commit changes to a project while strapped into a seat in a tin can flying over the Pacific Ocean, that developer generally cannot simultaneously work with the project's bug database. Committing changes and making bug tracker changes are activities which often go together, but bug tracking systems remain strongly in the centralized mode.

The Asus Eee PC in subnotebook format has been the hit portable computer of the year, with the recent 900 series upgrade only brightening the Asus star. Now word comes that an Eee desktop – with the same Linux OS – will be launched at Computex and on sale later this year.

A year’s research on Novell and the openSUSE project is now published as a master’s thesis at the University of Oslo. “Managing Firm-Sponsored Open Source Communities” details the collaboration between Novell and the openSUSE community. Community members and employees in Novell have participated in the study. The study deals with the tension between openness and control often found in projects that mesh corporate entities with the open source community. On the one hand, Novell wants to enable participation and contributions from external contributors, but cannot turn over full control to the community because it produces its enterprise product from openSUSE.

Currently, Debian users have two main choices of software to install to synchronize their PCs' clocks to online NTP servers — Ntpdate and NTP. I tried to use Ntpdate several different times in both Debian Etch and Lenny, but it didn't work for me. I could open up a root console and type a command to manually make Ntpdate synchronize my PC's clock, but Ntpdate could never find my specified time server when I booted my PC — that's the only time that Ntpdate automatically tries to synchronize. In contrast, NTP uses a daemon that runs at boot and then continues to run all of the time, to continuously keep a PC synchronized to within a few thousandths of a second of the exact time.

Psychonauts is based on the exploits of Raz, a young boy gifted with psychic abilities who escapes the circus to try to sneak into a summer camp for those with similar powers in order to become a "Psychonaut". He finds that there is a sinister plot occurring at the camp that only he can stop from happening. The game is centered on the widely strange and imaginative minds of various characters that Raz enters as a Psychonaut-in-training in order to help them overcome their fears or memories of their past in order to gain their help and progress in the game. Raz gains use of several psychic abilities during the game that are used for both attacking foes and solving puzzles.

My Asus Eee PC 701 is a brilliant low-cost ultraportable notebook, but it has a really small screen (seven inches diagonally). I needed to find out how to make the best use of the available area when I was using the Firefox Web browser. I used F11 to toggle the browser's built-in full screen mode, in which a modified navigation toolbar and optional tab bar are all that is displayed above a Web page, but I yearned for something even better. I found two add-ons that could meet my needs. With the FullerScreen extension, when you press the F11 key the current Web page is displayed over the entire screen -- no menus or toolbars. If you move the mouse pointer to the top or bottom of the screen area, the extension will display a full screen navigation bar, the status bar, and, if appropriate, the tab bar.

Lazarus Ide is now included in Ubuntu Hardy/Intrepid and can be easily be installed and then can be used with Firebird

This tutorial describes how to set up a TeamSpeak server on an Ubuntu Server system. Teamspeak has the ability to make more than one server by setting different ports for each server. The user that controls all these servers is called the SuperAdmin, he has the ability to make more servers and users with or without their rights.

There's a debate brewing over what to do if companies offer open source code in a software-as-a service model, then duck their obligation to contribute changes back to the community. The risk involves a company taking a product based on open source code, significantly modifying it, and using it as the foundation for selling a service over the Web. Technically, SaaS doesn't distribute code to end users, so the provider isn't required to contribute code changes to the community at large, the way Red Hat must when it resells its version of Linux.

Do consider asking your national standards body to join the complaint of South Africa. [...] This opportunity to stop or slow down OOXML is rare and the days that are left to do so are few. We ought to take advantage of this while it lasts.

This scenario is designed to accelerate access to the web server and provide a layer of defense for the web server that did not exist previously.