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

Operating Systems

IT manager’s crash course: Operating systems – link.

Google threatens Microsoft’s crown jewel, Windows – link.

Introduction to the Xen Virtual Machine Monitor – link.

Linux

Help for Linux newcomers

Venerable Linux training materials now available free from FTLinuxCourse – link.

Introducing Linux Made Easy (book comes with a Xandros 3 CD) – link. Interview with book’s author, Rickford Grant – link.

New tutorials on Linux fundamentals from IBM – link.

Tux Magazine is geared towards new Linux users – link.

Why Linux needs a mentor program – link.

Migrating to Linux on the desktop – link.

Five mistakes Linux neophytes make – link.

Freespire agrees to name change, Linspire gives out free copies (for a few days) – link.

A UserLinux autopsy – link.

Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition is a refreshing break from the documentation many have come to expect – link.

Five common mistakes that Linux IT managers make – link.

Linux.com’s “CLI Series” latest – the word on wget, CDargs, p0f. Series index here.

Locating files in real-time with rlocate – link.

File compression tools for Linux – link.

10 days as a Windows XP user: A GNU perspective on things – link.

Reiser4 and its difficulty in getting included in the kernel – link.

Linux and desktop graphics – link.

Using the Fluxbox Window Manager – link.

Xfce 4.4 previewed – link.

KDE 4 promises radical changes to the free desktop – link.

Beauty and Magic for KDE – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

What is Darwin (and how it powers Mac OS X) – link.

The Solaris 10 pitch – link.

Other OS’s

OpenGEM, which is intended to provide a really light but powerful GUI for FreeDOS, “Project Liberation” beta 3 released – link.

The many faces of OS X – link.

YellowTAB Zeta 1.0 is the best way to use BeOS – link. YellowTAB gives back the code – link.

RISC OS 5.10 readied for release – link.

Applications

Add zip to Windows by replacing mediocre native programs with superior open source alternatives – link.

Samba-3 by Example is one of the rare titles that actually delivers the goods – book review.

Upgrading to Apache 2 – link.

NASA’s World Wind project, like Google Earth, is a 3D planetary visualization system that overlays satellite imagery, weather, political, and topological map data – link.

A comprehensive comparison of archiving tools for Windows – link.

The history of VisiCalc – link.

Databases

Building databases with Kexi and OpenOffice.org 2 Base – link.

PostgreSQL SQL syntax and use – link.

Internet applications

Born-again Mozilla suite SeaMonkey 1.0 alpha taken for a spin, and is looking promising – link.

Hacking Firefox – link 1, link 2, link 3.

Reported vulnerabilities and real security favor Firefox – link.

Opera eliminates ad banner and licensing fee – link. Interview with Opera CEO Jon Tetzchner – link.

Sylpheed 2.0 messaging client is approaching perfection – link.

Explore the Semantic Web using Java-powered Firefox extension Piggy Bank – link.

Gajim Jabber (instant messenger) client impresses – link.

Send in the Skype clones – link. Four Linux softphones reviewed – link. Finding voice codecs for free software – link.

Wireless made easy with Netapplet – link.

GPRS Easy Connect enables one to connect to the internet by hooking up a GSM/GPRS-capable cell phone to a Linux-based PC – review.

BitTorrent for Linux – link. Distributing content with BitTorrent – link.

Using Blosxom (and its Python-based cousin PyBlosxom) to quickly and easily set up a blogging environment for your team’s use – link.

OpenOffice.org news

Creating an invoicing system with OpenOffice.org Writer and Calc – link.

StarOffice 8 is MS Office’s toughest rival yet – link, review.

Desktop-oriented applications

The Grumpy Editor’s guide to personal finance managers – Part I, Part II.

Microsoft unveiled its Expression Studio, which contains Acrylic, a vector and bitmap graphic editing and creation tool; Sparkle, a 2D and 3D animation tool; and Quartz, a design tool for page layouts and web sites – link. Flash, meet Sparkle – link.

Inkscape at version 0.42.2 shows great promise – review.

Free 3D figure posing and animation software package DAZ|Studio 1.0 released – link.

GimpShop is a Gimp in Photoshop’s clothing – link.

Seeking simple 2D animation software for UNIX-like OSes – link.

KDE’s Kontact personal information manager acts as a centralized viewing and editing interface for email, contacts, to-do list, calendar, and notes – link.

Flash in a flash with DemoStudio, a GPL-licensed screen capture application for Windows that can record single screen images, a series of screen images on a set interval, or screen video and audio – link.

Using WireFusion for 3D animation – link.

Cinelerra, the best open source A/V production environment for Linux today, 2.0 released – link.

Gallery, an open source PHP project enabling simple management and publication of photographs and other digital media through Apache or IIS, 2.0 released – link.

(De)compress audio files with FLAC, the Free Lossless Audio CODEC – link.

Programming

Creating a software demo with Impress – link.

Graphical user interface/Web

Web design and administration with WordPress – link.

Objective Modula-2 for Cocoa and GNUstep – link.

On Mozilla as a development platform – link.

C/C++/Java family

Memory management in Objective-C vs. Java | Introducing the Maven multiproject concept, which is designed to facilitate the management of complex projects – link.

C++ programming for Symbian devices – link.

Build dynamic Java (and other language) Web applications using Ajax – link. Discussion here.

Scripting and high-level languages

Strength of RealBasic 2005 for Mac, Windows and Linux lies in its ability to hide complexity from the user – review.

A review of 6 Python IDEs – link.

Introducing IPython, an enhanced interactive Python shell with improvements such as history caching, profiles, object information, and session logging, as a replacement for the default interpreter – link.

Shed Skin is an experimental Python-to-C++ compiler that can convert many Python programs into optimized C++ code, without any user intervention such as adding type declarations – link.

The Python Enterprise Application Kit (PEAK) is a Python framework for rapidly developing and reusing application components – link.

Game scripting with Python – link.

Open Dylan 1.0 beta 1 released – link.

Security & Privacy

SSL VPNs and OpenVPN: A lot of lies and a shred of truth – link.

How secure is VoIP? – link.

Darik’s Boot and Nuke is a great tool for obliterating your data – link.

The 6 dumbest ideas in computer security – link.

Peter van der Linden’s Guide to Linux: A Lesson in Encryption – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Auditor is a security collection of more than 300 security GPL software tools based on Knoppix – link.

Protecting Linux against automated attackers – link.

Miscellaneous

Tim O’Reilly profiled – link. Discussion here.

Business

Copyright lawsuit filed against Google in connection with company’s Print project – link 1, link 2.

Making money from FLOSS – link.

Gartner on open source: fair and insightful – link.

Sun CEO Scott McNealy likened himself to Steve Jobs and his company to Apple Computer on the brink of launching the iPod, suggesting the server maker is poised for take-off – link.

Open-Source success roiling software field – link.