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If you’ve ever had to write a portable application in C, you’ve likely run into the same problem faced by countless other programmers: no matter how much you try to stick to a well-defined application programming interface (API), the program just doesn’t work the same on every platform.

While POSIX does a passable job of providing a portable API for most Unix and Unix-like platforms, POSIX either doesn’t exist on other operating systems or is so full of bugs as to be unusable. Moreover, POSIX isn’t always the best choice. Non-Unix platforms, such as Microsoft Windows, have their own APIs that are better mantained and perform better on that platform.

When faced with a pay-now or wait-for-functionality choice, several companies that use PostgreSQL recently pooled their resources and paid for development of faster, deeper indexing capabilities in the open source database.

Partnership Brings HPC Capability and 10GbE Interoperability to Embedded Cluster Computing

Google may be taking the Internet by storm, but in the process they are raining on the Linux parade. Google has clearly presented The Community a middle finger salute. The technology that paved their streets with gold is now being cast away like a pock-marked leper.

Since the last Bug Squashing Party (BSP) we managed to keep the number of release critical bugs from growing which is better than we did after the one before but certainly not good enough.

Welcome to this year's 43rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly. Several interesting new distribution releases appeared during the past week. LG3D LiveCD deserves a more detailed look due to its unusual desktop and amazing 3D visual effects, while the newly renamed RR4 Linux live DVD is probably the easiest way yet to install Gentoo Linux on a hard disk. Also in this issue: a brief history of Red Hat prompted by the resignation of the company's co-founder Bob Young, a comment about the unusual Internet security guidelines published by a local government in the state of New York, and a few signs that our readers do love and appreciate DistroWatch. Happy reading! Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch

Despite its recent announcement of servers based on AMD64 CPUs, Sun Microsystems is still gung-ho about its 64-bit UltraSPARC computers. The newest addition to Sun's workstation array is the portable Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation. At first glance you might think it's a fancy-looking notebook system, but on closer inspection you'll discover that it's got all the power of a Sun Blade workstation in a fraction of the size.

Last week's CLI Magic column was about Trojan Scan, a useful tool -- still in alpha development phase -- for warding off the bad guys. I noted then that the utility was based on the lsof command -- actually, based on just one of the hundreds of combinations of arguments used to tell lsof exactly what it is you want from it. This week we're going to take a longer look at lsof, and see a few of the other mysteries it can solve.

Once my original Mini-ITX project was completed I finally had a chance to sit back and use the computer. Knowing how simple my needs were, the Mini-ITX project computer was orginally designed to be as basic and quiet as possible. This meant no hard drive, no extra accessories- just a stripped down system. While this suited my needs well at the time, its lack of versatility soon became an issue.

Microsoft Corp., already under government scrutiny over its behavior toward competitors, told manufacturers of iPod-like portable audio devices that under a new marketing program they would not allowed to distribute rivals' music player software but pulled back after one company protested.

The Justice Department said it decided to drop the issue because Microsoft agreed 10 days later to change the proposal.

[ED - And the Justice department believe MS precisely Why? ]

NEW YORK - A quiet revolution is transforming life on the Internet: New, agile software now lets people quickly check flight options, see stock prices fluctuate and better manage their online photos and e-mail. Such tools make computing less of a chore because they sit on distant Web servers and run over standard browsers. Users thus don't have to worry about installing software or moving data when they switch computers.

Three recent moves by eBay, Google and Oracle are aimed at building global online communities that thrive on open standards.

When you install an application package in a Debian-based system, sometimes prerequisite application packages are unavailable. These missing packages are known as broken dependencies. Left unresolved, they can cripple your system's ability to install new packages. They're a disaster that isn't supposed to happen in Debian, thanks to the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) and the scripts contained in Debian packages. That makes broken dependencies all the more devastating when they happen. Some users have even been known to reinstall the whole operating system, despairing of otherwise having a functioning package management system. However, depending on how the broken dependencies arose, you have several options to try before you consider reinstalling.

Free open source software took a further step toward meeting the needs of business users today with the release of Sequoia Open Source ERP. This suite of business applications brings a low cost, flexible, and scalable solution to businesses worldwide.

Why would you want to use a beta of Firefox when you an have a more stable release? The version that comes with Breezy Badger has a bad memory leak - and 1.5 runs faster.

The department has signed an umbrella contract with Novell that sets out the terms and conditions on which it can buy the SuSE distribution of Linux as well as a range of proprietary Novell software products. These include NetWare and ZenWorks, which it uses to handle email and project management.

If buzzwords such as tagging, blogging and feeds make as much sense to you as Uzbekistani politics, Flock isn't the browser for you.

On the other hand, anyone who writes daily blog posts, subscribes to Stuff's RSS news feed and shares their photos on Flickr will have cause to celebrate at Friday's preview release of the new software.

More and more software companies are developing applications on multiple platforms. Testing their applications on multiple platforms is a big challenge. In order to shorten the testing effort, they want to write their test scripts once and run them on multiple platforms. This article will walk you through the multiple platform automation coding process with an automation project for Windows and Linux using the Rational Functional Tester.

The universe of products is large and code quality varies from impressive to unreliable. But if IT managers choose the open source community's top products, they will find many solid programs that meet or exceed the capabilities of more expensive commercial alternatives, experts say.

[David Wheeler wrote this editorial in September. We link to it as it provides an unique perspective of issues. -ED]