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Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/52/
Debian Weekly News - December 27th, 2005

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Linux, once thought of as just a server play, is poised to reap $100 million this year as an embedded operating system, according to a new research report.

One of the most serious problems facing larger organizations considering using Linux and Open Source application stacks is managing the software environm

The inside scoop on upcoming additions and changes to GNOME and Ubuntu.

A new Firefox extension has been debuted that incorporates peer-to-peer capabilities into the browser via a sidebar. AllPeers "combines the strength of Firefox and the efficiency of BitTorrent" to add media sharing to the long list of available extensions.

Matthew Szulik, chief executive of Linux seller Red Hat, has filed a plan that sets a schedule for him to sell company stock so it can be sold in the future regardless of what material information the executive knows about the company. Red Hat disclosed the plan Tuesday, saying the executive wanted to diversify his financial investments. The 10b5-1 plan, when combined with other stock sales planned for January 2006, won't exceed 27 percent of Szulik's common stock.

Stuart C Wells joined Sun Microsystems in 1988 and has served in a number of key management positions. At present, in his role as the executive vice-president (Utility Computing), Wells’ task includes driving the utility grid computing initiatives and remanufacturing programmes. Reporting directly to Sun’s President and COO Jonathan Schwartz, he led the Sun ONE product development and product marketing functions for three years.

After 24 years in the industry, Wells holds five US patents in multimedia, video, 3D graphics and imaging, and has numerous international publications. In a teté-e-teté with Business Standard, Wells talks on myriad issues, including Sun’s renewed Wall Street attack and maps it against his present mission to now gradually increase adoption for Sun’s utility computing business. Excerpts:

My name is Henry the Adequate, and I am a superhero. Recently I have seen several very interesting articles on software utilities of use to sysadmins, such as

/dev/null - Definitely deserves a place here because it provides a source of unlimited storage. For example typing "mv ~ /dev/null" will free up a whole lot of space on your home partition. And the good thing is you can just keep putting stuff in /dev/null and it will never fill up.

Are you looking for something to buy with a gift certificate or for a gift exchange -- or just something neat for your computer? MozillaQuest Magazine (MozillaQuest.Com) reports: "Today we take a very quick look at live CDs, flash memory, digital music players, open source software, some books, and a digital camera that make nice gifts for almost any occasion. All work with both the Linux and Windows."

From The Rational Edge: This first article in a new series on building accessible applications with Eclipse begins by looking at assistive technologies and disabilities. It then discusses the functions and features that make Eclipse well suited for creating accessible applications on Windows or UNIX.

Linux has a number of useful bandwidth monitoring and management programs. A quick search on Freshmeat.net for bandwidth returns a number of applications. However, if all you need is a basic overview of your total bandwidth usage, iptables is all you really need -- and it's already installed if you're using a Linux distribution based on the 2.4.x or 2.6.x kernels.

While Internet Explorer usage shows relatively modest drops among consumers, it is in freefall with a critical constituency: SMB network managers. More administrators are running alternative browsers than ever. And when they pull the trigger, they're taking their users with them.

After more than two and a half years, SCO must finally turn over to the U.S. District Court in Utah any proof it has that there's Unix code in Linux.

WE REPORTED PRE-YULE that Dell UK was trying out shipping Firefox on desktop and notebook PCs. Blake Ross has confirmed that on his Firefox blog, if you hadn't already noticed. But according to news.com, that's not what Australia plans to do.

Many times, you want to execute a command not only on one server, but also on several servers. Here is an article that explains how to use distributed command execution.

tentakel' tool you can is a program for executing the same command on many hosts in parallel using various remote methods. With the help of tool called tentakel, you run distributed command execution. It is a program for executing the same command on many hosts in parallel using ssh. Main advantage is you can create several sets of servers according requirements. The command is executed in parallel on all servers in this group thus result into time saving.

Peter Quinn has announced to his employees that he will be resigning as CIO of Massachusetts, in the wake of continuing political in-fighting and unfounded (and publicly refuted) accusations over travel improprieties in the Boston Globe

As Linux Users, we may take for granted our immunity to certain "nasties" which Windows Users are subject. It looks like the state of Texas is "saddlin' up" to ride against Sony. Of course, it's Windows Users that will gain from this.

Have Americans become lazy when it comes to technology? We think so and offer a brief example as to why. Agree or not, one thing has become obvious...some of us are just plain lazy.

Why didn't I think of this? Bundle OpenOffice.org, TurboCASH, the GIMP, and some installation scripts on a CD. Round out the package with Gaim and Firefox, and sell it in retail stores to Windows users for $20.

Winona Area Public Schools plans to pilot a computer system next year that could save it from having to continually update or replace desktop computers.

Flies said the district has studied two common software systems, Linux and Citrix, that operate thin clients. It plans to test Linux, free “open source” software that has its own generic version of Microsoft Office, at the learning center.