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In the last two months I've been traveling a lot. During the same period my main desktop computer went belly up. I would have been in trouble without rsync at my disposal -- but thanks to my regular use of this utility, my data (or most of it, anyway) was already copied offsite just waiting to be used. It takes a little time to become familiar with rsync, but once you are, you should be able to handle most of your backup needs with just a short script.

In May this year Microsoft's Bill Gates showed off his expensive touch-sensitive table called Surface. Now the Linux world has a similar project under development and has released videos of it in action. Although still in the early days of development, MPX or Multi-Pointer X, is a modification of the X Windows Server that allows multiple input devices to be used at the same time.

These days, it seems like OS transparency is more necessary than ever before. Luckily, there are plenty of great virtualization options to choose from when you need to run another OS, without actually having to install it along side your existing operating system. Today, we examine each of these options and review their abilities in a rapid fire round.

It may not be as fancy-schmancy as Microsoft Surface or Jeff Han's demos but these videos of a Linux-based MPX multi-touch table shows that things are moving full speed ahead in the land of the free penguins. We talked with developer Peter Hutterer, who gave us his insight on the project, the iPhone and the ongoing multi-touch craze.

Our story last week about the paucity of Linux pre-installed machines available in New Zealand hit a nerve and elicited a flurry of comments from readers. But it seems that's not exactly the case. Lenovo's Australian and New Zealand communications head Heather Jones contacted m-net to straighten out our misunderstanding. She said that the new T61p ThinkPad will be available in New Zealand with Linux, but only if it is requested.

Some time ago we criticized the ISO in a series of posts. The closer you look at it, the more justified our suspicions seem. A Groklaw member points to some items in Portugese, then providing translations and explanation. On the face of it, some iffy thing — or shall we call it “corruption” — can easily be spotted. Portugal’s ISO says there is not enough space for IBM & Sun in the meeting room. And the ISO committee is, surprisingly, chaired by Miguel Sales Dias, from Microsoft.

Intellectual property may be off the table, for now, but it sure seems like Red Hat and Microsoft are still dancing around coming to some kind of partnership relationship. In a recent eWEEK news story by Peter Galli, Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's vice president of intellectual property and licensing, said, "Red Hat and Microsoft have previously had conversations about interoperability, but none of our recent conversations have included discussions about intellectual property cooperation." Ah! Notice the start of the last phrase, "none of our recent conversations." So, they are still talking.

BlueWhite64 Linux v12.0, featuring a 2.6.21.5 Linux kernel with IA32-emulation, has been released on live CD and DVD ISOs. The distribution is aimed at pure 64-bit AMD64 Athlon, Opteron, Sempron, Turion, and Intel EM64T processors in desktops and servers.

"Since many alternative approaches to hibernation are now being considered and discussed," Rafael Wysocki began on the lkml, "I thought it might be a good idea to list some things that in my not so humble opinion should be taken care of by any hibernation framework. They are listed below, not in any particular order, because I think they all are important."

OpenLogic on July 11 announced a free tool said to enable the tracking and analysis of thousands of versions of open source software across more than 800 application packages. The tool enables administrators to set and maintain effective software policies in mixed Linux, Windows, and Solaris desktop environments, according to the company.

One of the coolest tools to come out of the Fedora Project is Revisor, which makes it blindingly simple to create your own custom Linux distribution, where you get to choose the packages you wish to include. This week I've been playing with Revisor to generate a Dell Firmware Updates LiveCD. The result is a bootable LiveCD that lets you log in and run 'update_firmware' to flash your system to the latest BIOS on 282 Dell system types.

[In a comment, Matt adds that hopefully it will get released on linux.dell.com in the future. Nice work Dell. — Sander]

Interested in easily monitoring your Linux server from your web browser? Munin creates graphs for just about everything going on in your system. It is simple to install and configure, and is perfect for checking if your server is overloaded. You can view the results in a web browser on the Internet by using a http server like Apache.

HP has been awarded a top international Linux security certification that will help government agencies and enterprise customers reduce costs while implementing secure solutions on the company's industry-standard hardware. The certification, called the Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL4+) Common Criteria security certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, applies to HP servers, workstations and notebooks.

Aside from Java IDE, Eclipse can also work with PHP, Ruby, and Groovy, C, and C++. In this article, you will learn how to build and develop applications in C++ using the Eclipse C/C++ Development Toolkit (CDT), and Standard Template Library (STL). This allows you to streamline the process and take advantage of powerful features C++ offers. This article, which is a follow-up to "C/C++ development with the Eclipse Platform," is intended for C++ developers who want to learn C++ development using the Eclipse CDT.

An impulsive and immediate migration to Linux can sometimes lead to disappointment. Ambitious businesses are sometimes led to believe that their data can merely be be dumped from one platform onto another, but the reality is a little more complex than this. In order for a migration to be successful, one needs to be familiar with native Linux applications, and the data needs to be stored in a format that is independent from just a single application.

The Anaconda installer in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 provides a way of specifying the installation key in a kickstart file in order to allow for a fully unattended system install.

Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of the ultra-popular open source WordPress blogging platform, has issued a blunt edict that"all sponsored themes should be removed from themes.wordpress.net" before the WordCamp conference beginning on July 21, a decree that has met with widespread approval in the WordPress community. In directly related news, on July 10, Mark Ghosh announced that sponsored themes would no longer be promoted on the popular WeblogToolsCollection blog.

[Not directly Linux related, but probably of interest to you since many of you Linux users run WordPress-powered blogs — Sander]

American Fiber Systems (AFS), with headquarters in Rochester, NY, provides fiber optic network services directly to enterprises and to carrier resellers. Bill Ciminelli, vice president of network development and services for AFS, noticed that internal communications were becoming increasingly difficult because the number of mobile company workers like field technicians and salespeople was growing so fast. With an old-fashioned voice messaging system separate from email and other collaboration tools, AFS workers had to manage communications from cell phones, laptops, office workstations, and company phones. Ciminelli began looking for a solution that would move AFS into the 21st century. To his surprise, he found it in Asterisk, an open source product.

While the Avivo driver doesn't yet contain 3D functionality or support a number of features found in the official fglrx driver and the community Radeon driver, it is making steady progress despite its age. Most recently with the open-source R500 driver implementing shadow frame-buffer support, we have experienced a noticeable increase in performance. As we have begun to receive messages from those interested in this driver wondering about the performance capabilities, we have carried out a brief GtkPerf test comparing the Avivo git code to ATI's official binary "fglrx" display driver.

Wyneken belongs in the growing list of note-taking applications for GNOME, along with the Sticky Notes panel apps, Evolution, and Tomboy. Specifically designed for students' needs, it is equally well-suited to the random jottings that anyone might make during the course of their work, as well as letters, reports, presentations, and even man pages. Wyneken is built on LaTeX, so it allows for complex formatting when necessary, with the tradeoff of not having a WYSIWYG display.