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Creating a light, attractive desktop environment on a new low-end laptop using Openbox in Ubuntu is simple and offers you most of the features you need for everyday computing without much of the load that comes with GNOME or KDE.

Why a desktop installation of OpenBSD? It's a legitimate question. According to Distrowatch, among the three main BSD projects (they don't like to be called "distros"), FreeBSD is way out in front -- and is the base for PC-BSD and DesktopBSD -- followed by OpenBSD and NetBSD.

It is the time of the yearto gather and spend some time on our favourite IDE. Continuing the tradition to meet in cities famous for alcohol-based beverages and oversized servings of meat, Munich was the obvious pick. Pretending to be a civilised crowd, we managed to convince the boss of the Trolltech's Munich office to generously provide us with a room, a 4MBit SDSL line and lots of coffee. Read on for the agenda and how any interested KDevelop helpers can join.

Setting up a virtual File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server with a database back end offers many benefits. By using a database, you can store a large number of users centrally, so it's easy to manage. It offers more security than traditional Unix OS authentication methods, because virtual users can access only the FTP server's resources, not the OS's. You can use the many Web tools that are available to easily install, configure, and manage the database back end.

The Linux operating system, along with Microsoft Windows Vista and Mac OS X, will be pitted against one another in an “ethical” hacking contest. The CanSecWest Vancouver 2008 security conference will be hosting the competition to see which operating system is the most secure. Is this really a contest that matters even remotely?

In the first part of this series, I introduced you to the concepts behind IRC. The second installment is somewhat more practical in nature and focuses on the default IRC client used by most distributions running the GNOME desktop. This is Peter Železný's XChat.

New developers, new Stable Grimoire and work progressing on new Source Mage ISO.

This week Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, announced a partnership with Parallels, maker of the Virtualization products Parallels Workstation and Parallels Desktop for Mac. This makes four different virtualization programs that run on Linux: the free, open source Qemu; the closed-but-free versions of VirtualBox and VMware-Server, and the newly-available, commercial Parallels. This review takes a look at all four, and compares cost, installation, ease of use, and performance.

I was surprised that ZDNET has publishes an article about "Torvalds: Retirement won't see death of Linux". Don't they know what open source is all about? The great benefit of open source is that it doesn't depend on one supplier whether it is a person, a group or a company. therefore if this supplier retires anyone who have an interest in the project can take it and keep it alive. Open source have only four simple rules, is it so hard to remember? Therefore open source project need not die! However, it still can, like in the case of ...

As a Linux user, I've found it difficult to subsidize my computer habit. Oddly, more people were willing pay to see me rock out on a set of strings than finger-tap like Eddie Van Halen on my keyboard. Go figure.

Tucked in with the many security updates (and the restoration of one’s ability to paste text from a web page into a Word document!), a very interesting modification to the Office 2003 software waits quietly for installation with Service Pack 3. Unbeknownst to the user installing this “Pack 3,” their Office software is about to be imbued with a runaway power: the cutoff of access to your old documents. The vendor-neutral quality makes ODF a superior format for document retention.

Amarok project founder Mark Kretschmann was interviewed for "Not the Gentoo Linux Newsletter". He talks about Amarok and what makes this project special, its community, beer, more beer and other things of importance to him. Amarok headquarters is also pleased to announce Amarok 2 Technology Preview 1 for Windows, complete with an easy to use installer!

In the doublespeak of telecommunications politics "no compelling case" to regulate ADSL means it might be imminent and "it is unlikely there is a need to regulate" means "no way will there be regulation". Welcome to the brave new world of ALP telecoms regulation, or Telstra spin-doctoring. Take your pick!

Because the traditional System V init daemon (SysVinit) does not deal well with modern hardware, including hotplug devices, USB hard and flash drives, and network-mounted filesystems, Ubuntu replaced it with the Upstart init daemon.

This article is excerpted from the recently published book A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux.

If you gripe about a console-based installer, even those as relatively "easy" as Debian, the alternative disc for Ubuntu or even Slackware, then doing a BSD installation isn't for you. (Actually, it is, because DesktopBSD and PC-BSD, both of which I've also installed, make it much, much easier.)

Ubuntu Tweak is a utility created to make it easier for users to configure and change a variety of system settings. You can use it to quickly adjust settings for GNOME Panel, Compiz, and Nautilus, along with some more advanced security settings.

Hey you, ya you! Do you write Bash scripts? Come here, I have a secret to tell you. Python is easy to learn, and more powerful than Bash. I wasn’t supposed to tell you this–it’s supposed to be a secret. Anything more than a few lines of Bash could be done better in Python. Python is often just as portable as Bash too. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any *NIX operating systems, that don’t include Python. Even IRIX has Python installed.

The exact time line is a tad uncertain, but where XML is going isn't. XML's future lies with the Web, and more specifically with Web publishing.

It's not like anyone has asked for Windows XP to run on the Linux-powered One Laptop Per Child XO laptop, but Microsoft is getting ready to deliver it to us anyway. In an eWEEK news story by Peter Galli, Orlando Ayala, senior vice president of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential Group, said Microsoft is conducting field trials to make sure that a modified XP Service Pack 2 will run well on the XO. According to Ayala, "We are encouraged by what we have seen of Windows on the XO machine so far, and field trials started at the end of January involving about 200 XO machines running a customized version of Windows XP SP2 with a reduced footprint image."

The commoditization of equity trades is giving Web 2.0 open source investment platforms a chance to win converts. An increasing number of Web 2.0 companies are turning to user-generated financial and investing content to give them a strategic advantage in the cut-throat equity trading business.