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LXer Feature: 01-Mar-2007

With the gift of a new computer the help of a friend I recently decided to move from running OpenSuSE to duel booting Windows and Debian. Thus begins my adventure in Debian.

Frustrated by sites such as YouTube that require you to return to their site each time you want view the same video clip? If so, UnPlug is the perfect little FireFox extension for you.

The sar utility is invaluable for collecting and displaying system data, but its output could use a little help when it comes to readability. With kSar, you can display sar data with easy-to-read graphs, and even produce PDF reports of system activity.

This tutorial shows how to set up a fileserver for small and medium enterprises with SME Server 7.1. SME Server is an open-source Linux server distribution (released under the GPL) based on CentOS that can turn a computer into a gateway, firewall, fileserver, printserver, mailserver (including webmail), etc. In this article we will focus on the fileserver aspect of SME Server.

Malaysian startup Gupp Technologies is prepping its baby (and by baby we mean ugly baby, that only mommy could love) -- the Phreedom -- for Q2 release this year.

Fully functional support for theVST plugin standard is one of the most important remaining problems for the Linux audio world. VST plugins are ubiquitous in the Win/Mac audio worlds, they are employed extensively in professional and desktop music software, and it may be no exaggeration to claim that the VST standard has revolutionized computer-based creation of music and sound. Given its great popularity this writer believes that stable VST support would give Windows users a compelling reason to try Linux as an alternate or replacement platform, especially if they have a sizeable investment of money and experience in their collection of VST plugins.

The Mozilla Foundation's Mitchell Baker said back in October, 2004, when referring to the Mozilla browser and e-mail integrated application: "there are millions of people who continue to use the suite and are happy using the suite and like the way it works, and we intend to continue to make that possibility real" yet months later the organization entered a state of Firefox nirvana, leaving the future of the Mozilla Suite uncertain, until a band of beatifully stubborn volunteers picked up the torch and decided to carry on with its development.

Someone was kind enough to send me the package of materials distributed by ISO/IEC JTC 1 earlier today to its members. The package contains each of the responses filed during the ISO Fast Track Contradictions period for Ecma 376, the specification based upon Microsoft's OOXML formats, as well as the responses prepared by Ecma to those responses. As earlier reported, they are strongly negative.

Graduate students from Asia can pit their skills against their peers in a global business concept competition organized by Red Hat. The reward: a grand prize of US$20,000. Winners will also be considered for Red Hat internships.

Because Sudoku is based on very specific data patterns, you can use XPath expressions to evaluate the progress the user has made in a specific game. You can also use these patterns to easily use Mozilla Firefox XForms extensions to generate a game board that enables the user to play.

Ken Horner, senior vice president at BakBone, was pleased to learn that his company’s NetVault Backup won Datamation’s Enterprise Linux Product of the Year Award by a large margin over such notable contenders as Oracle's Unbreakable Linux, Novell's OpenSUSE, and XenSource's XenEnterprise.

As the leading IT institution in the Brazilian Federal Government, SERPRO is providing many key services to the 10th largest economy in the World. SERPRO is responsible for all IT services within the Ministry of Finance and key information systems for the federal government. Principal products are Internet access services, Intranet portal solutions, consultancy and network communication services, and government applications (cities, states and federal).

Dutch network computing specialist Athena has updated its OEM-licensable Linux-based thin client operating system. The company claims NLX (New LinuX) 5 to be the first thin client OS based on a 2.6-series Debian kernel.

While we spend a lot of time talking about Linux vs. Windows and Windows vs. the MacOS, the real battle for the Windows desktop alternative may be the preliminary round between the MacOS and Linux. That battle really kicks off this year with Apple stepping up their effort sharply with the Leopard, and Dell becoming aggressive (with others likely to follow) with SUSE Linux (though this choice may change). These two platforms have distinct advantages and disadvantages against each other and the winner will likely be the solution that walks away with the greatest number of advantages and the least number of disadvantages.

The big news of the day is that a legislator in California has decided that it is time to convince his colleagues that California should become the latest U.S. State to get on the open formats bandwagon. If the bill advances, it will the third such pieces of legislation to have been filed in recent weeks (the others are in Texas and Minnesota). The full text appears at the end of this blog entry.

Sun Microsystems has urged users to update and secure their Solaris 10 installations after a recently discovered zero-day vulnerability was found in the wild.

The Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship (FAIR USE) Act, introduced Tuesday would allow customers to circumvent digital copy restrictions under some circumstances. In a telling response, RIAA stated that: "The difference between hacking done for non-infringing purposes and hacking done to steal is impossible to determine and enforce."

For the next interview in the fortnightly People Behind KDE series we switch continents, travelling to Brazil to meet a cool-headed draftee with a 'cooler' pet, someone who keeps it in the family and who loves to both play and create games - tonight's star of People Behind KDE is Mauricio Piacentini.

Opinion -- Slowly, ever so slowly, the Linux desktop has been picking up momentum. It keeps getting better and better, but Microsoft's monopoly has kept many PC users from realizing that there really is a viable alternative to Windows. However, that's about to change.
Just like a few more snowflakes can turn a quiet snowy mountainside into an avalanche, Linux is teetering on the edge of becoming a real force in the desktop computing world.

In this cursory overview, Mark Rais, provides some of the common reasons why people brand new to Linux have installation failures. The brief article covers issues with Fedora, Gentoo, Mepis, PCLinuxOS, and Ubuntu.