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In the first part of this article, we talked about several different sound systems and APIs that were available for Linux and its various desktop environments. Many developers, however, need to write applications that will work across multiple environments, including different operating systems. Here's how we can accomplish this.

The threat of higher fees may now be the only way to prod more companies into buying SCO Group licenses because further lawsuits have been put on ice.

As part of its recently announced Asian push, Lycoris says it has signed agreements through which its Desktop/LX Tablet Edition Linux OS will be pre-installed on tablet PCs from MoBitS Electronics Inc. and Dialogue Technology Corp. Both Taipei-based companies are currently offering Lycoris's desktop Linux OS, Desktop/LX, as an option for their desktop PCs.

Catching up with Linux in the enterprise at last week's LinuxWorld event.

Gentoo at Linux World Expo and an update on the website redesign top this week's Gentoo Weekly Newsletter. Also covered is the search for a new owner of the Tips and Tricks section, along with the usual sections. Carlos is on vacation for the next few weeks and klieber will be pinch-editing during his absence. Be kind!

Suppose you want to be able to retrieve files from your Linux system remotely. The "standard" method of running the SSH server on port 22 is notoriously inadequate. OpenSSH, which is the SSH server on the majority of Linux installations, suffers from regular exploits of buffer overflow and other vulnerabilities, and you neither have the time to keep up with the patches nor want to make the effort -- you'd rather put up with not being able to access your files. This is where port knocking might seem to help -- but don't count on it.

Pen&Internet has released a version of its "natural handwriting recognition" program intended to run directly on Linux-based tablet PCs. "riteForm" can process handwritten forms and notes on mobile pen-enabled Linux devices, and was previously available only as a Web services component running on a remote server.

There are a lot of reasons to use Linux. You've seen people write or heard people speak about its use in clusters, offices, Web servers, and other common uses. One thing that hasn't been talked about enough is its utility as a superior tool for recovering data from other operating systems.

The anti-virus business is an interesting one. On the one hand, it's amazingly competitive on a worldwide basis, even if Symantec dominates the U.S. consumer market; there are a lot of companies in this business. But it's also a disappointing business technologically. The companies are not out to solve a problem as much as to acquire an annuity stream in the form of subscriptions for signature updates.

When coding a program, one of the best ways to show users that an event has happened is to produce sounds. That's why sound is now present in almost every program. Every operating system has different sound systems and APIs to access the sound card, so that no low-level coding is required to use the sound device. Programmers have many different choices concerning which system to use, especially under Linux -- and maybe that's the problem. This article will illustrate free sound architectures under Linux, as well as the different interfaces a programmer can use.

While developers at Microsoft Corp. may be celebrating that they finished work on Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP, IT departments around the world now face the question on whether they should update their systems, or not.

IBM officials scoffed at Sun Microsystems Inc.'s intimations last week that it would buy Novell Inc., calling the rhetoric nothing more than an attempt to disrupt IBM and its customers.

An upgrade to CrossOver Office makes the newest version of Xandros Desktop worth a look.

Even as commercial search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search grow more dominant, a new distributed search engine with the unglamorous name Grub is taking a different tack. Grub aims to take participants' unused bandwidth and CPU cycles to crawl more than 10 billion Web documents and maintain an up-to-date index of the Web.