Showing all newswire headlines

I've been working on a Linux Tips column for an upcoming issue of PC World US--a much tougher assignment than my monthly Free Agent ramble, for two reasons: First, I've got only one magazine page to work with, so I'm a bit restricted in what I can tackle. Second, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of our magazine's readers run Windows, not Linux. Since we do our darnedest to make every page of PC World engaging to our readers, I'm out to craft a Linux column that might prove relevant to those who are still computing Bill Gates-style.

There can hardly an IT administrator today that has not used SSH to log into a remote server. SSH Communications Security, the company that originally developed the SSH protocol (define), has now upped the ante with a pair of new solutions aimed at the enterprise market. SSH, typically in the form of the open source OpenSSH application, is widely deployed in nearly every UNIX and/or Linux variant in existence today, though SSH Communications Security claims its SSH implementation is the only one that is enterprise-grade. The newly announced SSH Tectia client/server solution 5.0 and SSH Tectia Manager 2.0 will work in UNIX, Linux, Windows and IBM mainframe environments and enables secure file transfer, application connectivity and system administration capabilities.

"Despite the well-deserved praise open source software often garners, it can be said that this means for developing software has inefficiencies, these in turn can lead to increased complexity and additional problems. Keith F. Kelly submitted the following editorial to osOpinion/osViews, which illustrates this point and offers some strategies to make them less problematic."

I'm a big fan of Make and an even better fan of their blog (helped by the fact that Philip Torrone maintains it). I recently got my attention grabbed by this post showing this one (furry goat, haha): transport your own Windows CE image and emulator along on your thumbdrive. Wherever you go, just pop in your thumbdrive and you see all your apps, bookmark and whatnot.

Data warehouse specialist Teradata has begun beta testing a version of its database running on Novell's 64bit Suse Linux Enterprise 9 operating system. Currently customers can buy the database hosted on 32bit operating systems - either Teradata's Unix MP-RAS or the Windows Server 2003 operating system. Scott Gnau, Teradata's vice-president of research and development, said the database server works as a black-box, or sealed environment, so the operating system on which it is running is largely invisible to users. However, the move significantly boosts the credibility of Linux as an operating system for mission-critical enterprise applications. Teradata's largest customers currently have over 500 terabytes of data in their warehouse systems, and Teradata's revenues last year were over $1bn.

Symphony OS is one of the most original Linux distros available today. Usually, a distro's most recognizable feature, and the one shown in the mandatory screenshots, is the desktop environment. With Symphony OS, the screenshots are the first hint that this is not your ordinary remix.

Versora and Win4Lin have collaborated on a $99 toolkit aimed at easing the task of migrating desktop PC users from Windows to Linux. The Complete Linux Desktop Migration and Virtualization Toolkit bundles Versora's Progression Desktop -- which automates the migration of data, application, and system settings from Windows desktops to Linux -- along with Win4Lin Pro, which runs Windows 2000/XP and its applications on top of Linux.

QCD Microsystems Wednesday announced the release of Samba PDC (Primary Domain Controller), claimed to be the first Linux system administration platform to utilize the popular Moving-Map Composer (MMC) graphical user interface. The tool boasts a point-and-click GUI administration interface usable by both experts and novices, according to the company.

Novell unexpectedly announced on Thursday that its board of directors had approved a share repurchase program for up to $200 million of Novell common stock over the next twelve months.

In a recent interview, ESR shocked a lot of people when he said, "We don't need the GPL anymore." Federico Biancuzzi contacted RMS representatives to talk about the past, the present, and the future of the GNU GPL. Among other things, they discussed the new clauses of the upcoming GPL version 3.

Recent weeks have seen a lot of cooperative activity between the KDE Accessibility Team and various other Free Software accessibility teams. The Free Standards Group Accessibility Workgroup, KDE Accessibility and GNOME Accessibility teams have now released a joint statement describing some of this cooperation. "We believe users who are persons with disabilities should be empowered to choose technologies from any and all environments which provide accessibility just as other desktop users today routinely use a mix of technologies from different desktop environments. Our goal is seamless interoperability."

Welcome to Security Alerts, an overview of recent Unix and open source security advisories. In this column, we look at problems in MySQL, umount, KDE's kcheckpass, GNOME Workstation Command Center, X.org, Squid, TWiki, ncompress, grip, Turquoise SuperStat, gtkdiskfree, and LessTif.

While some office suite users are still waiting for OpenOffice.org 2.0 to arrive, its parent organization has quietly released OpenOffice.org 1.1.5. The latest OO.o (OpenOffice.org) boasts several new features, not the least of which is support for importing OpenDocument documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

You don't need a secret decoder ring to use cryptography on your system--just some keys and a few tips.

Developers like the Firefox attention to standards compliance, inherited from its Mozilla roots. The most recent version, Firefox 1.5, comes with many features for XML developers, including XML parsing, XHTML, CSS, XSLT, SVG, XML Events in JavaScript™, and XForms.

Many people wonder how to make a living selling Open Source Software. If you feel slightly stuck, here's an explanation that might make sense to you.

Scribes is a text editor for GNOME. It is simple and easy to use. Scribes allows you to focus entirely on your tasks.

Hipatia, the NGO on knowledge share, will work for participants of Porto Alegre Forum, to say goodbye to Microsoft.

The kind of world that we will create is directly linked to the way we distribute knowledge and to the way we deal with key questions such as patents and intellectual property.

Release candidate of Version 2.0 is almost ready. In the meantime, new Version 1.1.5 supports the importing of OpenDocument documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

While Brazilians live with levels of poverty and violence that mark them as Third World citizens, they are emerging as trailblazers in the kind of high technology that's propelling many First World economies.