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DragonFlyBSD founder Matthew Dillon posted an update on his syslink protocol which he defined as, "a message based protocol that can devolve down into almost direct procedure calls when two localized resources talk to each other." The syslink API will be used to talk to both local resources on the same node as well as to remote resources on a different node. Earlier documentation further explained the networking nature of the protocol, "the Syslink protocol is used to glue the cluster mesh together. It is based on the concept of reliable packets and buffered streams. Adding a new node to the mesh is as simple as obtaining a stream connection to any node already in the mesh, or tying into a packet switch with UDP." In another email Matthew explained how various DragonFlyBSD nodes utilize Syslink to automatically establish the optimal physical route.

This tutorial describes how you can install and configure the Snort IDS (intrusion detection system) and BASE (Basic Analysis and Security Engine) on an Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) system. With the help of Snort and BASE, you can monitor your system - with BASE you can perform analysis of intrusions that Snort has detected on your network. Snort will use a PostgreSQL database to store/log the data it gathers.

Rudd-O interviews Scott James Remnant (by e-mail), the lead Upstart developer. He’s letting us in on juicy details of Upstart and a glimpse of his life. Upstart is a software package that, in all likelihood, will end up as the replacement for the venerable SysVinit and other Linux initialization systems.

There are some basic things I have learned as I convert more an more people over to Ubuntu and if I don’t I get them curious. I have compiled a list of necessary things people must show off to attract more interest and attention to the open source world of Ubuntu.

One of the oldest virtualization products, Win4Lin, is starting to show signs of aging. Win4Lin flourished in 2000, when competition was sparse and expensive. But seven years on, not only are there several virtualization products, but almost half a dozen are available for free. With no visible improvements over its previous version, Win4Lin Pro Desktop 4.0 is now outdated and outclassed.

Are open source security tools really as secure as those available for sale? Yes, say a growing number of enterprises. While some are understandably hesitant to employ solutions that are openly available to hackers and users alike, many organizations are finding that open source tools not only cost less, they are at least as secure as commercial products, if not more so.

The College of American Pathologists has justTransferred SNOWMED CT toInternational Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO). It is now available for use inside any of theIHTSDO Member countries if you are in the US, you can still get it fromNational Library of Medicine viaUMLSKS. However you still have to agree to the License Agreement for Use of the UMLS® Metathesaurus. It provides for some very FOSS unfriendly terms... included after the gap.

It's already been 10 days since I started my DPL term and I haven't made any formal announcement yet, so here it is. It's a bit late to comment on the elections, but let me thank all other candidates anyway, with extra sympathy for Steve McIntyre who for the second time came second by less than 10 votes and Gustavo Franco who had a platform very similar to mine yet wasn't rewarded with as many favorable votes. Also many thanks to Anthony Towns, my predecessor, and Steve McIntyre again for making the switch as comfortable as possible.

For the next interview in the fortnightly People Behind KDE series we travel to The Netherlands to talk to another developer of the KDE-PIM realm. Saving both your hands and your email frustrations - tonight's star of People Behind KDE is Tom Albers.

Don't get me wrong, Fedora is an excellent distribution but it seems to be losing some of its speed. I will still likely use Fedora 7 on a number of personal machines in hopes that Fedora 8 rebounds, but I certainly have been tempted to install Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn.

Adobe's plan to open-source its Flex Web development framework offers at least a partial open-source alternative to Microsoft's Silverlight and Extensible Application Markup Language.

Registration opened today for Ubuntu Live, the first official conference dedicated to Ubuntu. The three-day conference will be held July 22-24 in conjunction with the O'Reilly 2007 Open Source Convention, at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Ore. The conference will showcase a wide-ranging program of expert-led sessions and tutorials to inform and educate the growing Ubuntu community, from power users to the simply "Ubuntu-curious," an O'Reilly spokesperson said.

Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced plans to release source code for Adobe Flex as open source. This initiative will let developers worldwide participate in the growth of the industry’s most advanced framework for building cross-operating system rich Internet applications (RIAs) for the Web and enabling new Apollo applications for the desktop. The open source Flex SDK and documentation will be available under the Mozilla Public License (MPL).

Yesterday Nicholas Negroponte, former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab now head of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project, gave analysts and journalists an update on the OLPC project. Two big changes were announced - the $100 OLPC is now the $175 OLPC, and it will be able to run Windows.

[Like we didn't see this coming. Is there anything Microsoft can't do?, besides make a decent Operating System? - Scott]

The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the release of the fourth and final test release of Fedora 7.

Airline looks to IBM's Unix-based AIX platform to handle internal finance systems, says "stability issues" a factor.

[Stability Issues, are they kidding? Talk about a talented salesperson.. Oh well, at least its not M$ - Scott]

In the second installment of the Tux500 Audio Blog, it's my pleasure to introduce you to Stephan Gregoire. Stephan is the driver of the #77 Chastain Motorsports entry in this year's Indianapolis 500. He'll also be representing the Linux community in it's biggest marketing effort to date! Come on over, and allow Stephan to introduce himself...

I broke down and read Getting Things Done (GTD) in February (after letting the book sit unopened on the couch for a month). When I finished, I was determined to adopt the popular organizational method. I searched for a solid software tool to track projects and next actions, and found dozens of desktop-oriented applications to choose from. One of the GTD axioms is to collect all of your tasks, projects, and lists in one place; since I regularly use four PCs and laptops and a mobile phone, finding a GTD-aware tool that would run as a Web app was paramount. I settled on Tracks; it is open source, easy to use, and accessible from anywhere.

In just a few short days our choices in desktop operating systems seem to have tripled. Not only has Dell agreed to distribute Linux on certain desktop models, but it's also given XP a new lease on life. Responding to user requests on its Ideastorm site, Dell has agreed to offer consumers the option to get XP and not Vista on select Dimension desktops and Inspiron notebooks -- at least until Microsoft sends XP off to the OS boneyard in January 2008. Even Michael Dell is running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn on one of his home notebooks.

Novell openSUSE project has had a recent history of trouble with its update programs. Now, to make updating openSUSE more pleasant, the project is dropping its support for ZENworks and opening up YAST to community development. In an openSUSE development list management note, SUSE Project Manager Andreas Jaeger wrote, "OpenSUSE is focusing on native software management by using YAST and Libzypp, the package management library."