W.I.L. Tech-News Highlights for April 2005

Operating Systems

Giving Microsoft the Boot – Part III. Part I is here, Part II here.

Get the facts right on Linux, Microsoft – link.

Linux vs. XP on the desktop – link.

A shattering experience with Windows – link.

Windows vs Linux: A modern desktop comparison – link.

Linux

One-on-one with Miguel de Icaza – link.

Desktop Linux vs. Windows choice ... don’t get emotional – link.

Linux appeal grows as applications flourish – link.

The question of how much market share Linux on desktops will gain over the next few years misses the more dramatic shift in the software business – link.

Planning one’s migration to Linux – link.

Help for Linux newcomers

Windows to Linux: A beginner’s guide – link. The inside story of a man, a machine, and a migraine – link.

Upgrading from Windows 98 to Linux instead of Windows XP – link. Discussion here.

Windows-to-Linux migration tool goes free – link.

A Linux desktop adapted for Dad – link.

Linspire’s contribution to the Linux adoption curve assessed – link.

Linux commands for beginners – link; core file handling commands including file permissions – link. Linux commands for beginning server administrators – link. Linux commands for guru wanna-bees – link.

“Practical Linux” for the Linux beginner series – Part 1: Linux in the Digital Home, Part 2: (SuSE) Installation & Samba Server setup, Part 3: Email and Web Browsing.

Using your Linux desktop – link.

How to disable and circumvent Linspire’s Click N Run pay-as-you-go software service, and switch to using standard Debian packages and the Synaptic package manager. Also how to watch DVDs without Linspire’s proprietary DVD player software – link.

CrossOver Office can make or break a decision to switch to Linux. Version 4.2 is the latest – review.

Playing with Walmart’s Linspired laptop – link.

Ututo-e is (verbally) endorsed by RMS as “the only free GNU/Linux distro I know of” – link.

Creating a custom Linux LiveCD With PCLinuxOS – link.

On the suitability of Ubuntu for an Enterprise Desktop – link.

Linux.com’s “CLI Magic” series latest – rsync for backups, An introduction to CLI editors, Introduction to traceroute, Aldo talks in code. Series index here.

Top 10 Linux console applications – link.

Enlightenment DR17 is coming … eventually – link.

Linux on a laptop: A tinkerer’s journal – link. The state of Laptop Linux – link.

Adventures in migrating to new Linux distributions – link.

Linux 2.4.30 kernel is out – link.

Torvalds unveils new Linux control system – link. RMS says “I told you so” with regard to BitKeeper episode – link. Linus’s BitKeeper blunder – link.

Running Linux and BSD on the Mac Mini – link.

Linux in a Windows workstation environment – Part I, Part II, Part III.

Linux Desktop Hacks: One Hundred Ways to Customize Your OS – book review.

Toronto’s LinuxWorld Conference and Expo covered – Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

A linux.conf.au wrapup – link. Eben Moglen’s linux.conf.au keynote – link.

Dual-Core AMD Opterons tested on the Linux front, with impressive results … but you have to really need that extra core to want to pay the prices charged – link.

Securing Linux – Part 1: Introduction, Part 2: Planning the installation, Part 3: Hardening the system.

Designing a course in Linux system administration – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

64-bit Linux and BSD are maturing steadily – link.

DragonFly 1.2 is released – link.

PC-BSD is a user-friendly desktop-oriented BSD system – link 1, link 2.

The month of April in BSD – link.

Tales of rescuing old hardware, or how to install NetBSD when you think you can’t – link.

Solaris 10 is coming along nicely – link.

Windows and DOS

Finding a Windows application’s Registry keys easily – link.

In praise of Windows 2003 SP1 – link.

Windows XP SP2 and the Damage Done – link.

Hacking Windows XP: speed up your boot – link.

This year’s WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) focused on the advancements that XP 64 will bring, as well as taking a look at other forthcoming technologies – Keynote and Day 1, Day 2, Coverage Wrap.

What can we do to make the Windows GUI more usable? – link.

DESKWORK is a GUI built on top of DOS – link.

Mac

WinSuperSite’s Paul Thurrot reviews OS X 10.4 Tiger – link. OSNews reviews Tiger – link. ARS Technica reviews Tiger – link. AnandTech reviews Tiger – review.

Apple offers treats for Tiger users – link.

Everything you need to know to install OS X 10.4 “Tiger” – link.

Tiger Server roars, too – link.

Other OS’s

Real hardware OpenGL under BeOS – link. A look at YellowTAB’s progress – link.

AMIGA introduces AmigaAnywhere SDK version 1.5 – link.

Syllable 0.5.6 released – link.

Applications

Which online music service is best? – link.

Open source MetaDot Content Management System chosen for organic farmering cooperative intranet – link. Bricolage is an open source CMS which runs such prominent sites as MacWorld and the World Health Organization – link. Discussion here.

Adobe unveils plan to buy Macromedia – link. Adobe takes aim at Microsoft with Macromedia acquisition – link. Implications for the future of the graphics software industry – analysis. Merger is bad news for online development and collaboration – link.

Next version of Windows will include a new XML-based document format, “Metro”, that rivals Adobe’s PostScript and PDF – link 1, link 2, link 3.

Databases

Is MySQL gearing up to take On Oracle? – link.

A chat with a few PostgreSQL developers – link.

Internet applications

Opera Software ships version 8 of its browser – link. Discussion here. Opera CEO interviewed – link.

Firefox and Thunderbird Garage can help make a reader into a Mozilla master – book review.

Essential Firefox extensions – part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Firefox and Opera fail the Acid2 test (although they are no where near as lousy as IE) – link.

Top 10 Firefox browser annoyances – link.

Firefox security/bugfix version 1.0.3 is released – link. Security in Firefox – link.

Firefox news feed readers run the gamut – link.

Firefox Hacks excerpt: Bottom-up (RDF-driven) overlays allow existing Firefox GUIs to be enhanced – link.

Introducing UseModWiki, a single Perl script that can be deployed on any Web server that supports CGI scripting – link.

djbdns is an alternative to BIND – link.

Zen and the Art of Apache Maintenance – link.

OpenVPN, the versatile multi-platform SSL VPN reachs the 2.0 milestone – link.

Corel unveils a small business version of its WordPerfect Office 12 suite that includes a new WordPerfect Mail e-mail client – link.

Password-protected My Search History stores search results on Google servers – link.

Orb’s now free Web service streams your media to many devices, and does it well – review.

OpenOffice.org news

Mail merges in OpenOffice.org – link.

Making the leap from MS Word to OpenOffice.org Writer – link.

Lack of developers delays OpenOffice.org 2.0 – link.

Desktop-oriented applications

Adobe Creative Suite 2 offers numerous improvements, but some could use more time in the soup – link. InDesign CS2 streamlines page design and takes aim at QuarkXPress – link. GoLive CS2 makes CSS Web page design default – link. Illustrator CS2 gets creative – link. Discussion here.

Small-business forms using Scribus and PDF – link.

Adobe Acrobat Reader for Linux cleans up its act – link.

The Grumpy Editor’s guide to image management applications – link.

GIMP 2.2.6 released – link. Hack turns the GIMP into Photoshop look-alike – link. Making a plastic texture with The GIMP – link.

Blinkx 3.0 more secure, combines search results from a user’s hard drive and from the Internet in a single list – link. Blinkx smart folders get smarter – link.

How to get the best sound out of your PC – link.

Professional sound editing with Audacity – link.

Create insane grooves with Propellerhead Reason – tutorial.

instinctive-blender is a fork that brings back Blender 3D’s version 2.30 interface – link.

17 things you might not know you could do with iWork – link.

Cyberlink’s PowerCinema 4 brings to your PC the personal video recorder functions popularized by products like TiVO, and can also play DVDs, CDs, radio, and music files, and a lot more, too – review.

Small games, big fun – link.

Programming

Protect your source code: Obfuscation 101 – link.

An Object-aware memory architecture – link.

GCC 4.0 released – link 1, link 2. The GCC 4.0 highlights – link.

Introduction to aspect-oriented analysis and design – link. Aspect-oriented programming considered harmful – link.

Pd (Pure Data) is a graphical music toolkit for Windows, Linux, and Mac that enables you to wire up custom music programs in a way no commercial software can duplicate, for free! – link.

Battle of the IDE’s: KDevelop vs. Microsoft Visual Studio .Net – link.

Graphical user interface, Web

New GNUstep libraries released (ApplicationKit and FoundationKit) – link.

Qt 4.0 Beta 2 released – link.

wxWidgets 2.6.0 released – link.

Program with SVG – link.

A technique for displaying large lists or trees of information in small spaces using SVG – link.

Mozilla gains canvas element support – link.

Xaraya is a cross-platform web application framework that is available under a GPL license – link.

Nvu 1.0, a WYSIWYG HTML editor, preview release available – link. First look shows a lot of promise – link.

Quanta+, a web development tool for KDE, discussed – link.

C/C++/Java family

C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup is upbeat on its future – link. Discussion here.

GCJ (the GNU Compiler for the java programming language), part of GCC, discussed – link.

Kaffe, a clean room implementation of the Java virtual machine plus the libraries needed to provide a Java runtime environment, version 1.1.5 released – link.

Debugging free Java with SableVM and Eclipse – link.

Pros and cons of Java Swing and SWT GUI toolkit and myths surrounding them discussed – link.

Sun posts new desktop features of next Java – link.

Groovy Builders side-steps the details of markup languages and allows one to focus on the application content – link.

REST (Representational State Transfer) is a collection of design principles that use simple, stateless HTTP for data transfer, without the method-call-like abstractions of RMI or SOAP – link.

Scripting and high-level languages

Ruby on Rails plus Ajax is a potentially winning combination – link. Ruby on Rails showdown with Java Spring/Hibernate – link.

Alternatives to the to-be-discontinued “classic” VisualBasic discussed – link. On migrating from Visual Basic on Windows to any application framework on Linux – link.

A brief look at Apache module mod_python – review.

Python on your Nokia S60 phone – link.

PHP 5 Power Programming is available for free download – link.

Developer’s dilemma: PHP or Perl? – link.

Boo, a new OO statically-typed language for the Common Language Infrastructure with a python inspired syntax and a special focus on language and compiler extensibility, version 0.53 released – link.

Luban, a component-oriented scripting language, beta 1.2 is available – link.

Kupu is a JavaScript application that implements a flexible, full-featured HTML editor that runs in a web page without any special plugins, allowing users to create their own web pages – link.

Security & Privacy

How the public are inured to data breaches – link.

Database misuse: who watches the watchers? – link.

U.S. regulators take action over ID theft – link. ID theft is a misnomer which is hurting the fight against fraud (impersonation), according to encryption gury – link.

Backup tapes are backdoor for ID thieves – link.

Hardware is secure (false) – link.

Setting up an intrusion detection system with open source tools such as Snort, Shadow, and ACID – link.

Detecting suspicious network traffic with Port Scan Attack Detector (psad) – link.

Pharming attacks target the Web, surfers may be unknowingly redirected to malicious Web pages – link.

Bad guys’ attacks on computers will get worse – link.

Investigations into the attempt to steal an estimated £220 million from the Sumitomo Mitsui Bank in the City of London is focusing on a plot using members of the cleaning staff and bugging devices – link.

Paranoid penguin: Linux VPN technologies – link.

PC zombies invade China, as hacker-controlled computers are used to launch DoS attacks, send spam – link.

Is your company storing up email trouble? – link.

Veritas CEO stays silent on Symantec dreams – link.

Holes, patches, defenses

Opera’s new version 8 fights phishing – link.

Hackers plot phishing scams, mobile viruses, as mass-mailer viruses become so yesterday – link.

Beta version of Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition stumbles a bit, but shows promise – review.

“Highly critical” flaw found in Netscape – link.

Web server attacks and website defacements rose 36% in 2004 – link.

Miscellaneous

Easy ways to recycle old PCs and cell phones, really! – link.

Sex android begats Armageddon machine – link.

The Flat New World, where anyone with smarts, access to Google and a cheap wireless laptop can join the innovation fray – Part 1, Part 2.