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The iPhone is slick, but what happens if Apple says you can't do what you want with it? That's where OpenMoko steps in.

It takes years maybe decades to master the commands available to you at the Linux shell prompt. Here are 10 that you will have never heard of or used. They are in no particular order. My favorite is mkfifo.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft rolled out what’s arguably its most important product this year: Windows Server 2008, the operating system for corporate server computers. It’s a cornerstone to a bunch of other Microsoft software, and it will be used by businesses large and small. But it will probably be ignored by an increasingly important type of company: the many little start-ups building new Internet services and technologies. They love Linux; Microsoft would dearly love to woo them over.

Tomorrow is the planned launch date for Gnome 2.22, the latest release in the ever-improving desktop environment popular with free software users. With the launch planned for tomorrow we thought a quick run-through of the main features of Gnome 2.22 was in order.

BackerUpper is a tool similar to Apple's TimeMachine. It is intended to create snapshot-backups of selected directories or even your full hard drive. From the BackerUpper project page: "Backerupper is a simple program for backing up selected directories over a local network. Its main intended purpose is backing up a user's personal data." This article shows how to install and use BackerUpper on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon).

I listened to a webcast from JBoss World today with a group of people. After hearing several speakers announce new middleware products and initiatives (as JBoss is the leading force in open source middleware), one of them turned to me and asked, “Just what is middleware?” When I started to describe transaction servers and database connection pool sharing, she held up a hand and said, “No. I want to know what it is in real world terms, and why it’s a big deal.”

EnGarde, a GNU/Linux-based operating system produced by Guardian Digital, aims to provide a secure system that is easy to manage from anywhere. Its philosophy of including only what you need to lessen possible vulnerabilities, combined with strict SELinux application policies and default configurations tuned for security, make EnGarde an excellent base for a server -- though it's not without its problems.

Will 2008 become the “Virtual Year”? That’s what some people would have us believe now that the virtualization hype is reaching never before seen heights, and large acquisitions & mergers are starting to become quite common ( Citrix bought Xensource, Novell picked up PlateSpin, Sun acquired innotek, Quest Software snapped up Vizioncore while VMware treated itself to Thinstall, and so on). But few people realize or fail to acknowledge that the large majority of virtualization techniques and developments were started as, or remain Open Source projects. Where are we coming from ?

In this interview, the CEO of Epic Games (Unreal Tournament, etc.) predicts the game engines of the future may be using software rendering due to increasing CPU performance which eliminates the need for an API. GPUs are evolving into generic array processors which could even run the Linux kernel some day.

Linux has proved to be much more resistant to malware than Windows, especially when it comes to viral infections, but any remote exploit makes it just as susceptible to worms, trojans, and rootkits as any other platform. Given all the fuss in the news recently about compromised Linux/Apache servers being responsible for infecting Windows users with malware when they visit those compromised sites, we thought it would be a good time to take a look at three of the best rootkit/malware detection tools available for Linux desktop and SOHO users. Here's a brief comparison of three popular choices: Chkrootkit, Rootkit Hunter, and Ossec.

In order to provide a better service to the existing openSUSE Community and to our new users, we’re pleased to announce that suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de and the openSUSE support forums at forums.novell.com (the three largest English speaking dedicated SUSE forums) are joining forces to merge into the new official openSUSE Forums at forums.opensuse.org.

The Australian survey, Open Source census 2007, funded by IBM and Fujitsu, was conducted by Open Source strategic consulting firm Waugh Partners under the guidance of NICTA (National ICT Australia). The survey sample included 327 individuals working on Australian Open Source projects in Australia and abroad, as well as 129 companies providing Open Source services. The Open Source census 2007 is claimed to be the first national research project to study companies and contributors involved in the Australian Open Source industry.

Simon, I'm beginning to think that you were right and I was wrong. You said a standard's process is a crucial aspect of the standard's product, and a process that is not open cannot be trusted to produce a product that can be considered open. I maintained that I had seen and used many wonderful standards that took absolutely zero input from me, and therefore I didn't see my participation as a necessary prerequisite for assuring quality in the future. I believed that no matter what the process, a standard should be judged by the product. Watching the fallout settle from the BRM in Geneva, I'm beginning to think that you were right and I was wrong.

Does GNOME co-founder Miguel de Icaza's backflip over the Novell-Microsoft deal a few days ago mean that he has finally been convinced that he is on a one-way path to nowhere? Has he realised that his own project, Mono, is actually putting GNOME on a development track that can leave it open to patent claims one day? And has he realised that creating Moonlight, a clone of Microsoft's Silverlight, (with which the company hopes to trump Adobe's Flash) is not going to advance the cause of free software one iota?

GUI calculators may be user-friendly, but they don't offer much comfort for a command-line power user. Fortunately, console-based tools such as bc, Genius, and Calc offer distinct advantages over their GUI counterparts.

Much information already exists concerning methods for deploying networks and hardware using thinclients. However, in this excerpt from David Richard's book, we shall try to clarify those essential differences between using a network with personal computers and thin clients. Certain network designs prove to be very stable and provide the best possible solution...

Computers that run the Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows didn't attract enough attention from Wal-Mart customers, and the chain has stopped selling them in stores, a spokeswoman said Monday. "This really wasn't what our customers were looking for," said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien. To test demand for systems with the open-source operating system, Wal-Mart stocked the $199 "Green gPC," made by Everex of Taiwan, in about 600 stores starting late in October.

Desktop Linux systems have been available from vendors both small -- such as NorhTec -- and large -- such as Dell -- for some time now. But, until recently, users who feel more comfortable buying from a retailer have had few choices other than some low-end systems from Wal-Mart. Things are changing.

Dual-booting operating systems can be very convenient, but with it brings the troubles of trying to keep data synchronized between the operating systems. Sure, in most cases Linux can read/write to partitions, but something even more convenient than that is a partition that both operating systems use for userdata. This guide overviews the procedure on how to set this up between Mac OS X and Linux.

I decided to start from scratch with my Debian server project. Last time I was too hasty in adding the open-source version of Movable Type to my installation and intermingling files before I was ready. This time I'm going to be a lot more methodical and make sure that Apache and MySQL are working properly -- meaning I can run CGI scripts and have a directory dedicated to same -- before I start with Movable Type. I could've removed Apache, done some cleanup and gone from there, but since I didn't have much "invested" in the install, I wiped the drive and started over.