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The miracle of near-native virtualization technologies has saved professionals countless hours of OS thrashing. Excluding 3D graphics, systems administrators can accomplish nearly any task requiring a multitude of platforms within the comfort of the Linux workstation.

Here you can see a comparison side-by-side of the installation steps of XP, Vista and Feisty, see how Ubuntu is easier to install from scratch that Windows.

Thanks to recent commits in the RandR 1.2 branch for the open-source X.Org Radeon driver, it's now possible to use S-Video and composite TV output on your ATI graphics card without any patches. This is not limited to the R200 series but will also work with the R300 series and theoretically any graphics card supported by the xf86-video-ati driver. In this guide have outlined the instructions for enabling TV output support from the Radeon driver git code as well as some of the current limitations.

In this tutorial, we will use an online bookstore as our model website, but the techniques we cook up can be applied to a wide variety of other sites as well, from weblogs to portfolios, from market-facing business sites to corporate intranets.

Microsoft and Xandros announced a messaging protocol license and collaboration agreement that will enhance the interoperability of Scalix email servers with various mobile and personal computer-based email applications that utilize Microsoft email protocols. This agreement expands on the ongoing Microsoft-Xandros collaboration.

Managing one site on a Web server can be tough enough, and the job is even harder if you have to host multiple client sites on a badly configured setup.

Right away, as the hype and hot air came oozing off this distro, I could not believe my eyes. On a machine that I have run no less than 13 distributions on, for the first time, I'm looking at what appears to be 640x400 resolution. This is inexcusable, considering no other distro has ever had this problem before.

System administrators need to secure their systems while avoiding locking them down so strictly that they become useless. Bastille is a software tool that eases the process of hardening a Linux system, giving you the choice of what to lock down and what not to, depending on your security requirements. It bundles many of the tasks routinely done to securely configure a Linux system into one package.

Antonio Diaz Diaz, the developer behind GNU DDRescue, took the time to answer a few questions for Blue GNU regarding the GNU data recovery utility and how it compares to other projects.

A misleading article appeared Monday on an anti-SCO Web site called Groklaw run by a blogger who calls him or herself 'Pamela Jones.' Jones tried to pick apart a story I wrote about SCO v. Novell. I need to set the record straight because virtually everything 'PJ' said about my article is wrong. 'PJ', or whatever this person's real name is, claimed that a number of specific points I made in the 565-word story were inaccurate, and spent more than 3,000 words trying to prove it. But 'PJ' is wrong on every count except for one, minor numerical detail that I'll get to later.

[This is Paul's response to this Groklaw story, which in turn was a rebuttal of Paul's earlier story on SCO-Novell.—Sander]

In a surprise move, Google quietly released StarOffice in its Google Pack of free downloadable programs. StarOffice is Sun Microsystems' commercial office suite. A version of it, OpenOffice, is the most popular open-source desktop suite. StarOffice 8 was released in 2005. In eWEEK Labs' tests of StarOffice 8 at the time, the labs were pleased with the suite's word processing (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation (Impress) and database (Base) functions. In addition, the Labs had generally good results opening and creating Microsoft Office-formatted documents with StarOffice.

Parvus Corporation, the U.S. subsidiary of the Eurotech Group, has announced that the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration Consortium (VIIC) in the U.S. has selected its DuraCOR 1100 computer for the federally-funded Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) initiative aimed at reducing highway congestion and collision prevention.

As an intro, Jay Beale from Intelguardians took an impromptu survey to find out who was using what Linux. This discussion was designed to discuss the types of attacks, how to recognize them, and how to defend them. The primary points that were covered were the secuing of a system from an O/S standpoint. In other words, look for things that shouldn’t be running, users that shouldn’t be doing things, and applications that shouldn’t be doing things and find ways to remove them, inhibit them, or remove them. Sounds simple enough.

It is now three months since I first posted the table of OOXML file types found by Google. I was curious how the numbers have changed. Google has indexed 162,700 ODF documents and only 1993 OOXML documents. In three months, 13,400 more ODF documents have been added to the web, with only 1,329 OOXML documents added. That isn't what I would call good traction for the overwhelmingly dominant office suite.

After two weeks of using the new Dell Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu, I decided it’s time to write down some of my thoughts about this new Linux offering from Dell. The time seems right for a company like Dell to partner with a distribution like Ubuntu and bring Linux to the masses. Unfortunately, Dell and Ubuntu’s parent company Canonical have not worked together closely enough to make this a first-rate offering. While I think the 1420N is a great computer overall, the lack of attention to detail (and unbelievably bad driver support) keep these latest Linux offerings from being ready for the general public.

XenSource has dished out a fresh version of its flagship server virtualization product that should help the vendor compete with market leader VMware. XenEnterprise Version 4.0 brings a host of new tools for managing large numbers of virtual machines, physical servers and storage boxes. In addition, the software provides serious scale improvements, including 64-bit support that allows for systems with more memory and support for both larger virtual and physical systems.

At LinuxWorld in San Francisco, Palm announced two new software providers for the Palm Foleo mobile companion. LogMeIn, the world's leading provider of remote connectivity, will bring remote PC access capabilities to the Palm Foleo through secure connections over the web, enabling easy desktop remote control, data backup and file sharing. With this application, users can quickly and securely access files and network resources on their home or work computers when away. Palm has also selected Wind River as its Linux platform provider for future Foleo software releases.

Last week the TV-Out support for the Radeon driver was merged into the open-source Radeon RandR-1.2 driver. This TV-out support should work with all ATI graphics cards supported by the open-source driver. In Alex Deucher's list announcement he mentions that the driver will only work with composite and S-Video output and is currently limited to a resolution of 800 x 600.

This weekend I suffered a meltdown of my workstation’s main hard drive. The drive help my Windows Vista Ultimate install, which in turn held several hundred pictures, music files, movies etc. Circuit City had a great deal on drives, so a quick car trip landed me a brand new 500GB Seagate drive for $109.99. After popping the drive into the machine, I gathered up my respective DVD’s and set off to rebuild the beast. Only this time, Vista was going to have company - and maybe competition. This time, Ubuntu 7.04 was getting an equal share of the drive. It is time to really see which one is easier to install.

The Sabayon Linux live DVD distribution, based on the unstable branch of Gentoo Linux, has been in development for several years and caters to a wide variety of users. Having started out with a beautiful but mainstream appearance, it now boasts one of the most unique looks in Linux and more usability options than most other distros. The distribution offers premium open source games, accelerated desktop effects, a large and varied software suite, and several variations. Besides the full release, Sabayon also comes in a Business Edition and usually a Mini edition. With all it has to offer, Sabayon has something for everyone.