Showing all newswire headlines

In a recent walkthru we outlined the steps for taking an existing server and converting it into a NAS box. That article assumed that you already installed Linux on the server and you will maintain that installation (i.e. updates, security, etc.). This article takes examines an alternative: a dedicated NAS distribution called OpenFiler that allows you to very simply create a stand-alone NAS box that can be administered over the web.

Here are some screenshots of the Slackware based Zenwalk 6.4 GNOME distribution. This quick little distro features many improvements and takes full advantage of GNOME 2.28.2, the Linux kernel 2.6.33.4, features several artwork changes, and more.

It looks like Dell will join Acer and HP in offering netbooks based on Google's Chrome OS sometime this fall. Dell isn't among the official Chrome OS partners named by Google, but as noticed by Download Squad, the code repository for Chromium OS — the open source incarnation of Chrome OS — includes some rather conspicuous bits that point to Dell as an early manufacturer.

If you've ever tried to change system-wide bash settings, you know there are three major ways of invoking bash, all of which behave differently when reading in settings files. 1. Interactive login shell (e.g., when logging in from the console or via ssh) 2. Interactive non-login shell (e.g., when you run bash at a terminal prompt) 3. Non-interactive shell (e.g., to run a shell script).

Ubuntu Netbook Edition (formally netbook remix) is a collection of applications that make Ubuntu more usable on smaller screens. But you don't have to be running a netbook to benefit. This article looks at how to use the best netbook remix features in a standard Ubuntu 10.04 install.

When I said recently that we still need the Open Source Initiative (OSI), it started a flood of comment. There's no doubt that we need OSI - but we need a better OSI. The one we have now is just too small to be effective and too mired in past successes; a renaissance is needed. You can help.

Another shoe has dropped for the SCO Group -- this makes about a dozen -- but when will this outfit go away? First the SCO Group sues IBM for billions in a case related to alleged intellectual property infringement, and then it starts threatening Linux and Linux users. Then, after Novell says that the SCO Group does not have the rights to Unix that it needs to sue and threaten, it sues Novell. Since then it has been mostly downhill for the SCO Group.

"Making significant architectural changes" the official answer. Adobe has discontinued 64-bit Flash 10.1 development for Linux stating that significant architectural changes were being made to the plugin that would add improved security.

When you install the Ubuntu Netbook Edition in October, don’t look for Firefox on the desktop -- it won’t be there. Chromium, Chrome’s open source cousin, is going to be taking its place. After years of desktop dominance on Linux, is Firefox losing its foothold or is this an anomaly?

Twilio Cloud Communications announced the release of OpenVBX, an enterprise telephony solution that provides Google Voice like functionality and scalable performance. Unfortunately Twilio doesn't offer hosting, leaving that up to an admin to decide.

Are you like me and have multiple Ubuntu machines under one roof? Are you tired of downloading the same update multiple times? Sick of what seems to be duplicate work? Let me introduce you to my little friend... squid-deb-proxy.

This article describes how you can monitor your Postfix mailserver with the tools Mailgraph and pflogsumm. Mailgraph creates daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly graphs of sent, received, bounced, and rejected emails and also of spam and viruses, if SpamAssassin and ClamAV are integrated into Postfix (e.g. using amavisd-new). These graphs can be accessed with a browser, whereas pflogsumm ("Postfix Log Entry Summarizer") can be used to send reports of Postfix activity per email.

By utilizing the power of the World Community Grid Cancer research can be dramatically accelerated. The community grid is a sharing of computer resources. You donate not your computer but your systems resources.

I know it sounds crazy but the Linux Desktop isn't dead, it's just pining. It's pining for the correct platform--a tablet computer. And, I'm not referring to some cheap imitation tablet that will merely satisfy a few observers and nerdlets who use Linux. I'm thinking of a tablet computer for hardcore Linux moguls. You know, the kind of Linux person who is so into Linux that he tries to carry an egg on his feet through the winter. The kind of Linux fan who carries a wallet-sized photo of Linus Torvalds in her wallet. Linux pines for a true tablet platform that will do Linux justice and vice versa. Does one exist? Not yet.

Microsoft and Oracle are losing out to Linux and MySQL while cloud computing's not exactly taking off, according to the latest survey of Eclipse users. The number of those building software using a PC running Linux has grown by thirteen percentage points in three years to almost a third, while those using a machine running Windows has dropped by 16 points to 58 per cent since 2007.

The first three months of the year were defined, in the technology sector, by some very scary numbers. Just feast your eyes on some of these. Apple, we learned, pulled in profits in just three months of over $3bn. That’s not in a year – that’s just in a quarter…

Threading is no small topic in programming circles. Some folks love them. Some hate them. Whether they are good or evil is a debate for the pious among us — I use them when they fit and you might want to do the same. In this article we’re going to have a look at a basic building block of Android applications — performing an operation in a secondary thread while keeping the primary GUI thread accessible and the user up to date at all times.

Talk about strange bedfellows. When Red Hat Summit kicks off June 22 in Boston, Microsoft is expected to be on hand as part of a major virtualization push. Here are the details, along with a look at additional surprises in store for Red Hat Summit.

After much planning and thought about implementing new categories on Buntfu.com it became apparent that the structure needed to be descriptive yet open enough to require little maintenance was more challenging than originally anticipated. Yet, the importance and significance of supporting more hardware and software that works with Free and Open Source systems was too great to ignore. Many categories were directly influenced by Ebay in an effort to produce a familiar environment.

This post is the first in a series on shell script debugging, error handling, and security. Although I’ll be presenting some methodologies and techniques that apply to all shell languages (and most programming languages), this series will focus very heavily on BASH. Users of other shells like CSH will need to do some homework to see what information transfers and what does not. One of the difficulties with debugging a shell script is that BASH typically doesn’t give you very much information to go on. You might get error output showing a line number, but that’s just the line where the shell became aware of the error, not necessarily the line where the error actually occurred. Add in a vague error message such as the one in Listing 1, and it gets difficult to tell what’s going on inside your script.