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Ever wonder why The VAR Guy is so happy running Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux? Perhaps it has something to do with the true cost of spyware — an epidemic problem mostly limited to the world of Windows. So, how does spyware impact user productivity? A new report from CompTIA (the Computing Technology Industry Association) provides some clues. Here's a look.

Backing up data stored in a MySQL database is an important issue for anyone running a blog, wiki, or any Web-based application that relies on the popular database engine. Many MySQL management solutions allow you to export database data as an SQL query, but if you are looking for a dedicated MySQL backup tool, phpMyBackupPro (pMBP) is your best bet.

Intel's Open-Source Technology Center is involved with a number of open-source Linux projects such as Threading Building Blocks, Moblin, PowerTOP, and the X.Org graphics driver. Intel also has vested interests in numerous other projects such as Xen and KVM. One of Intel's lesser-known projects, however, is the Linux-ready Firmware Developer Kit. The Linux-ready Firmware Developer Kit is a bootable CD that analyzes the BIOS or EFI on the test system to see how well it's able to work with Linux and what features are supported via the firmware. The primary purpose of this kit is for use by firmware developers, but it's also able to aide end-users in determining what BIOS features on their system will work with Linux.

Vista SP1 isn't the big improvement that Microsoft has been touting it as. Read about why Vista still does not compare to the Linux desktop.

Today, I'm going to show you a great little application for easily generating a Web gallery of images that requires no server side coding. Just generate your gallery with a simple command, then upload to your Web site. Of course, coding a Web page is easy enough if you know even basic HTML, and you can create thumbnails with the tools in ImageMagick easily enough, but setting up that little web slide show can be a tad time consuming even if you know how to do all these things. There are also some great Web photo gallery packages out there, like Zenphoto, but what if you don't have shell access to your Website or you aren't allowed to install programs or run scripts? You might well be in a bind. This is where iGal comes into play.

It took about a week to get here, but it finally arrived, my Asus Eee PC is here. First of all I had to curb my excitement as the batteries took some time to charge – up to two hours. So why did I buy this? Well I have to admit to a wee bit of technolust. But avoiding technolust was the very reason I did not just go out and purchase one as soon as the Eee PC came out. After I had one in my hands for 3 minutes, I knew that I wanted one and that it would be useful. How useful? Well, let me tell you.

While Canadian telcos are still dragging their feet in following the U.S. example of making cellphone data fees more competitive, the U.S. telcos are about to scratch each other’s eyes out after the arrival of Linux-based handsets.

SAP is furthering its efforts to gain midsize business customers with a new appliance-like ERP server that runs on quad-core Xeon processors and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise. The server, developed in partnership with Intel, is aimed at manufacturing and service companies and comes bundled with SAP's All-in-One ERP software and the SAP MaxDB database. SAP is demonstrating the system at the Cebit show in Germany this week.

IBM is taking Red Hat to the Russians in an attempt to win the emerging Eastern European IT explosion war.

If you need an archiving program that can run under both Windows and Linux, sport a graphical interface, and be licensed as open source software, only a single program will do: PeaZip. It acts as a graphical front end for several tools that provide archiving, compression, encryption, and similar functions.

Texas Instruments (TI) will join the Linux Foundation in order to "collaborate with industry leaders who define both technical and operational best practices around open source software," it announced. TI's open source strategic marketing manager, Eric Thomas, will join the Foundation's board alongside new members Larry Augustin and Chris Schlaeger.

[T.I.'s statement makes it sound like they showed up late to a party they never wanted to go to in the first place. - Scott]

Designing good looking websites is often a little bit hit and miss. Even with the best web development tools, getting things to line up or matching colours is hard to achieve. Forunately, Firefox has a couple of great extensions that make laying out a web page just a little bit easier.

KDE Community Ships Second Translation and Service Release of the 4.0 Free Desktop, Containing New Features in the Plasma Desktop And Numerous Bugfixes, Performance Improvements and Translation Updates

OpenMoko, developer of open source Linux mobile phones, has open sourced the casing of its handset, releasing the CAD files so anyone with a computer-aided manufacturing technology can create their own versions to fit the OpenMoko electronics.

Shuttle today announced that the newly launched $199 KPC will feature the Foresight Linux operating system. With an intuitive interface and user focused design, Foresight does away with the need for users to be familiar with Linux.

First, let me clear up a mistake I made in my previous article about sidux. I used a “S” instead of a “s”. sidux is spelled with a small s. I am still trying to get around Mrs. Gibson’s High School English class. Okay, now that we have gotten the English lesson out of the way, you may be wondering, what in the world is sidux. Well, to start off, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a couple of screenshots of my desktop. Keep in mind that I like to keep my desktop simple and uncluttered. I have my icons all hidden, but as are most things in sidux, that is easily changed.

Landscape -- a new Canonical tool for remotely managing Ubuntu desktops and servers -- debuts March 5. It holds great potential for enterprise administrators. But could Landscape also become a tool for managed service providers to remotely manage small business networks running Ubuntu? Here's some perspective from MSPmentor.

I did a Debian Etch install on one of my test machine drives recently, and today I added the openssh-server package so I could play around with PuTTY and Xming. Once I installed openssh-server (I used Synaptic, in case you were wondering), using PuTTY to start the connection, I was asked whether or not I expected the encryption key to change (I was, since this is the Debian install, not OpenBSD, which I've been using until now).

Microsoft is encouraging its business partners to promote its Office Open XML specification (OOXML) to the Indian Bureau of Standards (BIS) and Ministry of IT. This move has incensed supporters of the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) who fear that the "soft" Indian state may not be able to stand up to Microsoft pressure tactics. Open Source Initiative (OSI) board member Raj Mathur claims to have a copy of the Microsoft letter to NGOs. "Microsoft has 'persuaded' several non-profit organizations," Mathur writes, "to bombard the Indian IT Secretary and the Additional Director General of the Bureau of Indian Standards with letters supporting its OOXML proposal."

Late last year, Everex, a mid-tier PC vendor, made a big splash with its inexpensive gOS Linux-powered Green gPC TC2502. Now, Everex is following that popular mini-tower PC with a Mac-mini format computer: the gPC mini. Like Everex's gPC TC2502, the gPC mini uses the Ubuntu 7.10-based gOS operating system. The gPC mini uses the newest version of gOS: Rocket gOS 2.0.