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

Operating Systems

Is desktop virtualization the end of the traditional OS? – link.

VMware 5.0 is out, and better than ever. But if you hate dual-booting, it is going to cost you $190 to get the closest thing to it – link.

Apple’s Tiger vs. Windows XP 64-Bit Edition vs. Linux – link.

Qemu 0.7.0 released – link.

Linux/Open Source represents far more than simply another tool among tools, it is a better paradigm and a better tool that restores value back to the user – link.

Windows cannot kill Linux – link.

Linux

The real Window for Linux comes from Microsoft’s pricing model – link 1, link 2.

Switch to Linux will pick up speed soon – link.

I don’t want you to talk, Mr. Gates … – link. Olive branch in one hand, but what’s in the other? – link.

How Linux could overthrow Microsoft – link. For many in the Linux community, Longhorn’s release is seen as a huge opportunity to poach customers – link.

25 years after DOS, lessons learned for Linux – link.

Lesson #1 for schools: get rid of Microsoftt – link.

The State of the Penguin – link.

Help for Linux newcomers

Linux Desktop Garage: Learn Linux environment and programs without installing operating system – book review.

Eiger, an anorexic version of Windows XP Pro, is meant for PC users whose machines are still running Windows 98, ME, NT Workstation or 2000. But low-end Linux operating systems that can do anything a Windows desktop can do for less upfront cost and with far better security – link.

Puppy Linux is a “small” (< 64MB) Linux distribution that offers an “amazing” combination of speed, size, completeness, and ease-of-use that has “evolved into a real workhorse distribution whose completeness is astonishing” – review. (The author also likes SimplyMEPIS + Codeweavers as a complete replacement for Windows.)

SLYNUX is a highly user-friendly Linux distribution designed for beginners – link.

Sentry Firewall CD is a highly configurable, bootable CD that takes a minimalist approach to firewalling – link.

Tired of supporting friends’ computers? Migrate them to GNU/Linux – link.

Fish: The friendly interactive shell – link.

Linux.com’s “CLI Magic” series latest – rsnapshot, shutdown, ldconfig and Friends, Watch it, Energize your console with redefined keys. Series index here.

Performance tuning for Linux: an introduction to kernels – link.

Optimizing Linux desktop performance – Part I. Discussion here. initng, or how to boot Linux faster – link.

Installing XFCE desktop environment in Fedora Core 3 – link.

Linuxfest Northwest 2005 in review – link. An inside view of Penguicon 3.0 – link.

A detailed description about the steps to be taken to setup a Debian based server offering all services needed by ISPs and hosters – link.

WineConf 2005 summary – link.

Load (Yellow Dog) Linux on the Mac Mini – Part 1. Ubuntu Linux, Yellowdog Linux and Mac OS X, all on one PowerBook? – link.

Interstructures plugins make Linux easy for Windows admins – link.

nVidia Linux display driver performance analysis – link.

Linux, outside the (x86) box – link.

The future of Linux on laptops – link.

Build your own Linux Home Theater PC – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

PC-BSD, a new FreeBSD 5.3 distribution, with a graphical installer and KDE 3.4 desktop, leaves a good first impression – link.

FreeBSD 5.4 has been released – link.

FreeBSD 5.4 on AMD64 makes a great server but lags on the desktop – link.

OpenBSD 3.7 has been released – link. OpenBSD 3.7, The Wizard of OS – link. OpenBSD 3.7 reviewed – link.

On SGI IRIX’s virtues as a workstation OS – link.

Windows and DOS

Windows is “rapidly approaching desktop usability” – link.

Windows XP SP3 rumored to be released before Longhorn – link.

“My Days with Longhorn” (newest build 5048) – link. A peek at the latest Longhorn – link. A look at Longhorn’s 3D graphics technology and what it will make available – link.

The future of Windows graphic technology – link.

DOS emulator dosemu-devel 1.3.2 released, evidently now with native support for Windows 3.1 applications – link.

Mac

OS X 1.4 “Tiger” is put through its paces – link 1, link 2, link 3.

Apple feeds Tiger to iMac and eMac lines – link.

Apple’s “Tiger” a serious enterprise OS, 10.4.1 Seeded – link. Exploring Tiger Server – link.

Mac OS X 10.4 more bling than bang? – review. Discussion here. Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” in depth – part 1, part 2.

Open Source Softward on OS X – link.

Apple before the Macintosh – link.

Other OS’s

The history of non-UNIX OS’s – link.

How Germans write much better code than IBM, and how Big Blue never learned to make quality OS/2 drivers – link.

VMS is showing no signs of going away – link.

MorphOS 1.4.5 released – link.

TextOS v2.0b1 released, adds many more commands to the TextOS BASIC language – link.

Is Linux Palm’s savior? – link. Interview probes PalmSource’s plans vis a vis morphing Palm OS into a middleware and application stack that runs on top of Linux – link.

Applications

Customers just want software that works was the message coming from customers, industry experts, and some company executives at the Software 2005 conference – link.

Creating a project dashboard with rawdog RSS aggregator that will keep project members aware of its status – link.

Issue #3 of Free Software Magazine in now available – link. Three free applications on proprietary systems, three proprietary applications on free systems – link. Promoting Free Software on non-free platforms – link.

The First Commandment of system administration: Thou shalt make regular and complete backups.
The Second Commandment of system administration: Thou shalt establish absolute trust in thy servers.
The Third Commandment of system administration: Thou shalt be the first to know when something goes down.
The Fourth Commandment of system administration: Thou shalt keep server logs on everything.
The Fifth Commandment of system administration: Thou shalt document complete and effective policies and procedures.
The Sixth Commandment of system administration: Thou shalt know what cable goes where.
The Seventh Commandment of system administration: Thou shalt use encryption for insecure services.
The Eighth Commandment of system administration: Thou shalt not lose system logs when a server dies.
The Ninth Commandment of system administration: Thou shalt know the openings into your servers.
The Tenth Commandment of system administration: Thou shalt not waste time doing repetitive and mundane tasks.

Open source has a cure for a sysadmin’s insomnia: the ZABBIX network monitoring system – link.

PGP Corporation launcheds a radical overhaul of its desktop security suite – link.

Moodle: the definitive open source learning management system – review.

Databases

Firebird 2.0 Alpha 2 released – link.

Selecting a mid-market database – link.

EnterpriseDB is based on PostgreSQL 8.0.3, with modifications to make it more compatible with Oracle and other enterprise databases – link.

The future of databases – link. Beyond relational databases – link.

Internet applications

Platform-specific Gecko-based browsers – link.

Opera 8.01 Technical Preview 1 for Windows released – link.

A side-by-side review of Opera and Firefox – link.

Firefox 1.1 plans native SVG support – link.

Firefox-based Netscape 8 given a first look – link. Netscape 8 lets you view Web pages using either the Firefox or Internet Explorer engine – link.

Is Firefox really more secure than IE? – link.

Mozilla browser extensions you cannot live without – link.

Outlook vs. Evolution vs. Kontact: an e-mail client comparison – link.

OpenOffice.org news

OpenDocument 1.0 approved as OASIS Standard. Openoffice 2.0, Koffice and Abiword (planned) will support the new standard – link.

OpenOffice.org a strong competitor to MS Office – link.

Interview with OpenOffice.org staff – link.

OpenOffice, Free-Software supporters make peace over Java – link.

A tip for inserting special characters easily into OpenOffice.org documents – link.

The Tiny Guide to OpenOffice.org constitutes an ambassador to the world of OpenOffice.org and open source software, and also serves as a handy and portable reference – book review.

Graphics applications

Open Source fun with Inkscape and SVG – tutorial.

Eliminating a background from a graphics file, leaving just the object you want, using the GIMP – HowTo.

Advanced image editing from the command line with ImageMagick – link.

F-Spot is a new photo manager created by Larry Ewing, the man best known for having created the ubiquitous Linux mascot Tux – link.

What ever happened to Virtual Reality? – link.

Unix graphing program recommendations sought – link.

A former modeler seeks 3D modeling app recommendations – link.

The notion of converting all data to text may not sound immediately useful, it can be surprisingly powerful – link.

Tools (both free and proprietary) for creating UML diagrams – link.

Other desktop-oriented applications

Partition Logic, a standalone graphical partitioning tool intended to become a free-software alternative to well-known proprietary offerings, version 0.55 released – link.

Version 6 of free-form AskSam database offers a new interface and a dynamic folder view, and may be the ultimate tool for managing and sorting all the data on your desktop – review.

AbiWord 2.3.0, the first snapshot of the development that will lead to AbiWord 2.4, released – link.

FOSS spreadsheets OO.o Calc, Gnumeric, and KSpread compared, and they all look good – link.

Grisbi is a cross-platform program that takes a common-sense approach to money management – review. Open Source accounting options – link.

Introducing the XMMS2 Media Player – link.

Applications to power your music and photo collections – link.

Programming

GCC 4.0 review and performance test – link. A review of GCC 4.0 – link. Programmers are working to debug and speed performance of the newly released GCC 4.0 – link. GCC 3.4.4 released – link.

Koders.com code search engine trawled through open source software repositories, collecting a large chunk of existing open source projects, the language they are written in and the licenses governing their use – link.

Graphical user interface

Simpler cross-platform programming with wxWidgets and wyoGuide – link.

How to develop software for the Mac – link. How to build a Core Data application on OS X Tiger – link.

OpenLaszlo, an open-source platform for creating rich internet applications which targets the Flash player as its runtime, version 3.0 announced – link.

Screem is an HTML/XML editing system that is aimed at web site development – link.

KDE completes switching their source control repository from CVS to Subversion – link.

C/C++/Java family

James Gosling, the man who brewed up Java, sees new uses for the 10 year-old language – link.

A Java developer talks about Mono – link.

Java2 SE v5.0 aka 1.5.0 (aka “Tiger”!) arrives for OS X 10.4 – link.

Eclipse casts shadow on Sun’s NetBeans Java development platform – link.

Scripting and high-level languages

Python is emerging as a powerful alternative to Perl and PHP – link. An evening with the Guru of Python, Guido van Rossum – link.

The Python Challenge is an amusing and instructive way to explore Python – link.

Python, XML, and Unicode – link.

Taking advantage of the PHP Extension and Application Repository, better known as PEAR – link.

mod_perl 2.0.0 for Apache has been officially released – link.

The free Rexx scripting language runs on nearly every OS – link. On the virtues of Rexx – link. Discussion here.

Mozilla extending Javascript? – link.

Introduction to Free Pascal 2.0 – link.

Fortress is a new language for from a team that includes Guy Steele, Common Lisp guru and contributor of Java, and is introduced as “the next Fortran” – link. Discussion here.

Ada, a modern programming language designed for large, long-lived applications, 2006 draft ISO standard is available – link.

Practical Common Lisp focuses on solving real-world problems – link. “Casting Spels in Lisp” tutorial here.

Security & Privacy

About keylogging and keyloggers – link.

Password security and safety tips – link.

I know what you downloaded from the “anonymous” P2P-system FreenetFreenet – link. Revamping Freenet – link.

Americans are just as blasé about password security as the Brits, according to a new survey – link.

Keystroke loggers are rapidly becoming the lure of choice for phishers – link.

Phishing attacks get more sophisticated, as analysts see rise in Trojan-based key-loggers launched via e-mail and instant messaging – link. Phishing attacks are growing more sophisticated as attackers devise ever more devious means to stay ahead of banks and others fighting the contain fraudulent scams – link.

Is VoIP service the next big target for hackers? – link.

Federal court strikes down FCC Broadcast Flag regs that would limit viewers’ ability to record and copy over-the-air hi-def TV programs – link.

Spyware invasive programs that generate pop-ups, hijack home pages, redirect searches and poison DNS files generates an estimated $2 billion in revenue a year, according to study – link.

Security breach that hit Cisco wider than thought – link 1, link 2.

Does the expiration of powers to regulate companies provided cryptography services to the public truly signal the end of the “crypto wars”? – link. PGP use ruled relevant in child abuse case – link.

Web site defacers going after phishers’ fake financial sites – link.

Postfix performance tuning – link.

Secure and private browsing with Squid – link. Transparent proxying with Squid – link. Three tools to help you configure iptables – link.

Holes, patches, defenses

Invisible assault on Windows: Rootkits attacks are not new, but they pose a growing threat to Windows PCs, using security privileges to better hide themselves – link.

Microsoft’s Beta Antispyware will scan your PC and zap adware, and will continue to run in the background and keep all adware at bay – link.

5 years later, still no “sorry” from Love Bug author – link.

Microsoft’s announcement that it will enter the AV market next year could be a sign of many things to come – link.

Microsoft is building a system of virtual Windows XP PCs that crawl the web looking for sites that use unreported vulnerabilities to compromise customer’s PCs – link.

Could deleting spyware be a criminal act in some cases? – link.

Cyberattacker could hold your files hostage, hacker demands ransom from businesses for tool to unlock affected files – link.

New threats target IM users. One worm spreads via AIM, while a phishing scam travels by Yahoo Messenger – link.

ZombieMeter Web site keeps hourly count of captured computers – link.

SSH is a possible worm vector – link.

Spam, advertising

How to install and configure EXACT to keep spammers from taking advantage of your mail server – link.

Spammers and scammers are finding new ways to uncover your e-mail address, and a whole host of personal information along with it – link.

Miscellaneous

Which online music service is best? 9 tested – roundup.

The robot in your phone – link.

The ideological war over intellectual property – link.

Why did computers come to adopt the GUI as their primary mode of interaction, and how did the GUI evolve to be the way it is today? – link.

Business

If you send commercial data by email or over the Web in the UK, it is liable for VAT (17.5%, imposed on services) on the value of the data – link.

The assault on Microsoft – link.

Dropped Tecmo copyright infringement suit means nudity for us all – link.

Free Software model in other areas of economy – link.

Building software using Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl/PHP/Python (LAMP) is one of the key requisites for VC investment today – link.

The Internet

Real’s new music streaming service Rhapsody hits a sour note – review.

Hollywood tries to summon BitTorrent Brits to U.S. court – link.

Verisign and .net: the fix was in – link.

A few suggestions for the Internet map sites – link.

Even if Google takes the Web, so what? – link.

Using the Semantic Web to enhance search – link.

Science

Cornell University research team has developed a self-replicating cube which has the ability to assemble itself into civilization-threatening configurations – link.

Researchers in Quebec have developed a new camera lens, which is extremely flat and five times thinner than a sheet of paper, that they claim will revolutionize photography – link.

Telecommunications

The rapid adoption of VoIP calls will wipe out traditional telephony, says research group – link.

VoIP outfit Vonage agrees to roll out a fully-functioning 911 service for its users – link.

Cost of VoIP calls may rise due to regulatory rulings – link. The 911 VoIP controversy may be the wedge that has the Internet become more regulated – link.

Internet phone calls are not toast, but the business model is certainly being raked over the coals – link.

AT&T’s VoIP service came with major installation hassles, but offered landline-like voice quality, most of the time – link.

Verizon’s decision to decommission free hot spots could be a sign that demand for public Wi-Fi is limited, some say – link.

Intel demos WiMax technology – link.

Some backers want Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband wireless technologies to work together – link.

HSPDA is faster 3G … in theory (but where are the phones?) – link.

More mergers in the telecom industry? – link.

Titans in entertainment and telecom and legions of upstarts are betting $billions that you will want to use your cell phone for TV, music, gaming, gambling, navigation … even Lilliputian porn – link.

The FTC’s broadcast flag is defeated … for now – link.