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Bangalore: ``Honey, I've shrunk your Linux computer!'' It's now the size of a postage stamp. Yet, it has all the power of a full-sized board — complete with 32 megabytes of memory; 16 MB of storage and the interconnects needed to fuel any standard Linux application. The Bangalore-based EI Labs India has just released ``LinSeed version 1,'' a single chip embedded Linux computer that original equipment-makers can use to create a host of handy devices, including wirelessly connected pocket computers.

LXer Feature: 29-Apr-2007

A weekly recap of the big stories concerning Linux and Open Source.

ArchLinux or Arch for short is one of the uprising new distributions. Well, at least compared to old folks like Debian or Slackware it’s still fresh and shining . Arch is gaining new users and good reviews every day. Let’s find out why this is happening.

This document describes how to install a PureFTPd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. This is much more performant and allows to have thousands of ftp users on a single machine. In addition to that I will show the use of quota and upload/download bandwidth limits with this setup. Passwords will be stored encrypted as MD5 strings in the database.

Starting next week, the Mozilla Corporation will be hosting twice-weekly meetings to discuss the future of customer support for Mozilla products. Several different support mediums will be discussed in the conferences, including knowledge bases, forums and real-time chat. The meetings, which are open to all, will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the next three weeks. Notes will be published afterwards for those unable to make it.

Con Kolivas continues to maintain the performance oriented -ck patchset that he started in early 2004, "this patchset is designed to improve system responsiveness and interactivity. It is configurable to any workload but the default -ck patch is aimed at the desktop and -cks is available with more emphasis on serverspace." In Con's latest release, 2.6.21-ck1, he notes that he has updated the patchset to include his improved SD cpu scheduler, "the staircase-deadline cpu scheduler has replaced the old staircase design in this version."

A former lover of the missing wife of Linux programmer and accused spouse killer Hans Reiser has confessed to killing eight people unrelated to the case, prosecutors informed the defense last week.

[jimf brought this to my attention and I thought it might be of interest to others. - Scott]

The book assumes a few things about the reader, which is good. If you aren't part of the "assumed" group, this book won't be very interesting or at least not very useful. Here they are...there are only two: The first assumption is that you know how to program. There are no details about to what degree, so I'll assume that basic programming skills will be sufficient. The second assumption is a little more specific. You'll need to have at least a basic understanding of PHP. If you need help in these areas, try reading books like Beginning PHP5, Learning PHP5, and perhaps some other beginner's programming book.

Since late last year the open-source Linux community has been ecstatic about the growing progress made by the Nouveau developers. Nouveau is an X.Org and FreeDesktop.org project for developing an open-source 2D/3D display driver for NVIDIA graphics cards. With NVIDIA Corporation not providing hardware specifications, this driver is being written through reverse-engineering NVIDIA's binary display driver. While the developers of Nouveau are making great strides and this driver is taking shape, the open-source ATI driver must not be forgotten.

At first glance, the story of the Tux500 project doesn't look too unusual. A couple of devoted Linux advocates were looking for a cool way to promote the operating system they love. Advertising on a race car is a great way to get open source noticed, says Ken "helios" Starks, one of the men working to raise enough money to enter a Linux-sponsored car in the 2007 Indianapolis 500 race. It's the kind of grass-roots effort for which the open source community is known: grab a domain name, put up a site, and submit the link to Digg. But Starks and IT consultant Bob Moore, the organizers of the Tux500 effort, added an extra step that is raising some eyebrows in the community: they opened a PayPal account and are asking Linux fans for more than a quarter of a million dollars.

On May 1st, the KDE games developer community held its monthly IRC meeting. This time the major topic was discussing which games would stay in the kdegames module for KDE 4 and which ones would have to be removed because they don't meet our self-imposed quality standards.

LXer Feature: 05-May-2007

In some Google searches for Linux computers, Dell advertisements have cropped up in the advertising links, leading unsuspecting users to Windows-only computers at Dell's website. After initially being ignored, LXer finally gets a response from Dell.

Metronome GC -- part of IBM WebSphere Real Time -- provides deterministic GC behavior that, when combined with other features, enables developers to write hard RT applications in the Java language.

The GoblinX team earlier this week released its Standard 2.0 (2007.1) edition, a bootable live CD based on Slackware Linux that features a 2.6.18 kernel and a default Xfce desktop. This release kicks off the second generation of the GoblinX distro for i486 machines, a team member said.

A lone hobbyist programmer sitting at his home in France is responsible for adding 235 USB webcams to the list of those supported by Linux. He tells the INQUIRER about this often unknown and unrecognized achievement.

I have just completed a preliminary version of an (OpenEMR + CK-ERP) connector. A demo of CK-ERP operating within OpenEMR 2.8.2 is availablehere.

Learn how to develop Google gadgets, small applications you can add to most any Web page as a means to offer dynamic and rich content. You can write them for your own use and then publish them on Google, where other developers can integrate your work into their Web projects.

In hindsight, it was correct of the US administration not to pursue plans to break up Microsoft for past anticompetitive behaviour. The company is slowly losing its monopoly of desktop software and on the Web it is foundering against Google.

Opinion: With Linux traveling to its desktops and notebooks, Dell is treading new but exciting ground.

After years of both technical and legal delays, the popular open-source Pidgin IM (instant messaging) client, formerly known as GAIM, has finally arrived.