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Fluxbuntu's aim is to be a "lightweight, productive, agile, and efficient" operating system; this review takes a look at Fluxbuntu and whether it lives up to the challenge of creating a user-friendly experience on a tight resources budget. The review discusses included applications, the user interface and ease-of-use, as well as some limitations.

Sun Microsystems has gone very granola by buying desktop virtualization software player innotek. (The small 'i' stands for big innovation or something like that.) Innotek pushes software called VirtualBox (less than 20MB) that lets developers run multiple operating systems and display them side-by-side on their screen. So, you can hop back and forth, testing your code across Windows, Linux, Mac and OpenSolaris. Beyond the development angle, VirtualBox handles basis PC and server virtualization tasks.

Linux comes with many serial text and gui based serial communication programs. My favorite is minicom - friendly menu driven serial communication program. If you are addicted to DOS / Windows TELIX (a telecommunications program originally written for DOS and was released in 1986), minicom is for you under Linux / UNIX. Let us see how to configure minicom for my Soekris net4801 Single Board Computer / embedded Linux device.

Those of you who - like me - are more interested in topics like Free and Open Source, and everything that’s related, will find some good pointers here. All of these great sites provide RSS feeds, so if you’re using modern browsers like Iceweasel or Firefox, you can “live-bookmark” them to see the headlines even without visiting the pages.

Earlier this week, I took a close look at the latest release of Fedora. Overall, Fedora 8 is a really solid distro. But there were specific areas that a lot of other reviews completely missed. In this piece, we will examine these more intimately to get a better understanding of Red Hat's new release.

After reading this post from the Ubuntu forums, I have to admit that running random code can be dangerous, even on a secure OS like your favorite Linux distribution. But does this mean that using shell scripts should totally be forgotten about? I tend to think not.

This is something that had to come out eventually - has Xandros picked up where the SCO Group left off? Well, let me put it this way. The single most effective way to defeat something that's offered for free it to find a way to make it better, then make a fortune doing it. In the past, Linspire and Xandros, among others, have tried this via various Wal-Mart sold Linux PCs and generally failed miserably at it. Then out of nowhere, comes another - Everex Linux PC - this time using common sense with Google branding power and make a fantastic go at it. Rather than convincing people that Windows-based PC hardware can be "tweaked to work,"

This is a question that has struck a lot of new Linux users. Should they use closed source software when the open source alternatives are lacking? Today, I will talk about some of the applications I use and the advantages that each of them present.

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a useful tool for examining the state of devices on a network. The open source world offers a number of consoles designed to manage the information from these devices and produce reports. However, there are circumstances in which access to the devices at a more customizable level is more beneficial. Given that the programming involved is minimal, it is worth considering custom applications for SNMP reporting.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has started deploying Linux-based Opengear console servers to remotely monitor and manage its international locations, including Australian Embassies, Consulates, High Commissions and territories. DFAT has already installed 16 Opengear CM4116 console managers to eight international sites with over 200 scheduled for installation over the next three years.

During a visit to a major university last week, The VAR Guy listened as an integrator slammed Asterisk as a “toy.” The open source VoIP platform, he asserted, lacked a service and support network for big enterprise and university deployments. Apparently, the folks at Digium (located a few hundred miles away…) somehow overheard the conversation. The Asterisk market leader has launched a new warranty program that could give skeptical partners and customers more faith in open source-based IP telephony. Here are the details.

When you have shelled out for a swanky mouse like the Logitech VX Nano, you want to make the most out of your investment, which means making its programmable buttons work. However, many Linux distributions recognize most mice as generic pointing devices, so none of the fancy extra buttons work right out of the box. The btnx utility can help you to turn your mouse into the versatile tool it is meant to be.

Orange and Access have become the latest companies to join the LiMo Foundation, a consortium aimed at promoting mobile Linux. The companies announced their LiMo memberships here on Monday at the Mobile World Congress. Both companies come bearing gifts. The European operator Orange plans to launch a "fully open, Linux-powered handset" in partnership with Access and fellow LiMo member Samsung Electronics. Japanese Linux company Access brings with it an established developer network that was acquired when it bought PalmSource and its Palm OS (which became Garnet) in 2005.

I’d like to configure my Debian box to backup two remote servers using rsnapshot software. It should make incremental snapshots of local and remote filesystems for any number of machines on 2nd hard disk located at /disk1 ( /dev/sdb2). How do I make backups?

From the Propeller Head Dept. Call me a propeller head, but I recently found myself chuckling at a collection of Linux compile and configuration messages on a German site.

[An older article, but I haven't seen it before. It made be laugh quite a bit :-) - Sander]

Over the last few months, open source has gained momentum at Stanford University in the form of the Stanford Open Source Lab. Inspired by groups like the Free Software Foundation, Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab, Drupal, Openflows Community Technology Lab, and MIT’s Open Course Ware, a few people at Stanford decided to band together and dedicate their time and energies to the development of free/open/libre learning and knowledge resources.

Great news for the English-speaking IT Crowd: the German makers of c’t magazine, Hannover-based Heise Verlagsgesellschaft just opened their great news portal heise online in the UK as well. Jonathan Bennett, who is editor-in-chief of the new English-speaking sites, wrote a first editorial and greeting message for the readers, headlined “Born at the right time“. And indeed, it seems so. Thanks for providing us with high-quality articles, and I wish you all a good and successful start.

Sun Microsystems announced today that they are buying Innotek. You can read the announcement here. In case you don't immediately recognize the name Innotek, they are the makers of the VirtualBox virtualization software that many of us have come to know and love. It's a great alternative to VMWare and they have an Open Source edition as well.

SAM Linux Desktop, an Xfce-fronted distribution based on PCLinuxOS, aims to be a complete and modern desktop operating system. Though it has problems that need to be worked out before it will match the competition, it offers an easy install, a 3-D desktop environment, and a flurry of programs to suit your needs.

Vimicro Corporation, a leading fabless semiconductor company that designs advanced mixed-signal multimedia products and solutions, today announced the launch of its most recent open mobile platform, Vinno-III-Linux, based on the Linux operating system, and the addition of two new Vimicro Mobile Multimedia Processors, the VC0848 and VC0878, to the company's product line when attending Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona, Spain.