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

Miscellaneous hardware to like – link.

Operating Systems

Just Say No to Microsoft is “one of the most interesting overviews of modern desktop computing history that’s ever been written,” according to John Dvorak – link.

Is Apple ready to fight the evil empire? – link 1, link 2.

Open document formats and the path to world domination: is ODF the means to end MS’s desktop dominance? – link.

Linux

Learn unix programming by example, and checkout the projects and tutorials – link.

Help for Linux newcomers

Rickford Grant’s Linux Made Easy is a good starting point for Linux newbies, as long as you are willing to install Linux on your hard drive (no Live CD included, uses Xandros) – book review.

Peter Van der Linden’s Guide to Linux offers relevance, depth, and passion for conveying the practical importance of code freedom to newbies without preaching (uses Linspire) – book review.

Marcel Gagne’s Moving to Linux (second edition): Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye! is yet another excellent introduction to Linux (uses Knoppix). Targets beginning end users, also intermediate end users who want a gentle introduction to the Linux command line – book review.

Linux Desktop Pocket Guide covers popular desktop Linux distros – link.

New website focuses on home Linux users – link.

Moving a beginner to Linux – link.

List tallies Linux equivalents of Windows applications – link.

5 days of Linux: a business user’s trial – link.

Granny finds Linux/KDE easier than Windows! – link.

Linux-based PCs: Customer service or lip service? – link.

Linspire, in the reviewer’s experience, detected more stuff more easily than any other Linux distribution, “easy to use” or not – link.

IBM’s validation of Ubuntu for use with its DB2 Universal Database is a victory for Debian – link.

On binary-only Linux drivers and stable interfaces – link.

Desktop Linux aims for the big time – link.

Linux.com’s “CLI Series” latest – sudo voodoo, netcat, Mirdir. Series index here.

A concise guide to Linux shell scripting – link. Classic Shell Scripting brings some of the most common and versatile shell tools to the table and shows the reader how to use them – book review. Demystifying the “top ten” Linux shell commands – link. Basic Linux command-line tasks tutorial from IBM – link. Getting more from your shell – link. Using Rexx for easy Desktop Linux scripting – link.

Cool unix projects, tutorials and code – link.

Linux Standard Base approved as international standard – link.

Linux thin clients revitalize student desktops – link.

On the use of Linux in cellular phones – link.

How a Linux distro saved hard disk data – link.

Degunking Linux contains hints on how to clean and “degunk” your Linux installation to help free up disk space and CPU time, and help optimize your machine– book review.

The Ubuntu H2 Micro USB drive bundles a tiny storage device with a fully-featured OS, in theory enabling one to take a system installation, all its settings and applications, and a limited amount of data anywhere – link.

Shared subtrees – destined for inclusion in kernel 2.6.15 – allow a system administrator to configure, in great detail, how various filesystem mounts should appear in the tree, how they relate to each other, and how they propagate between namespaces – link.

It’s turtles and modules all the way down – link.

KDE 3.5 released – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

Return of the BSDs – link.

PC-BSD = “FreeBSD For Dummies”, the easiest way to get a FreeBSD desktop up and running without any toiling on the command line. And there seems to be plenty of momentum and excitement about the project – link.

DistroWatch Weekly’s November 7 issue mostly covers the three main BSD releases, with especially FreeBSD 6.0 looking like a truly excellent product – link.

Trying out the new OpenBSD 3.8 – link.

Building an OpenBSD Live CD – link.

FreeBSD 6.0 reviewed – link. FreeBSD 6.0 announcement here.

How to set up a FreeBSD firewall/gaming router from old computer parts laying around the house – link.

Detailed instructions on installing and configuring PC-BSD – link.

A $10 Linux answering machine – link.

Other OS’s

A comprehensive look at Windows customization – link.

Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks – book review.

When a Linux user tries out Apple’s Mac Mini – link.

AmigaOS cross-compiler project now includes AROS – link.

New Syllable newsletter released – link.

SkyOS Beta 9 released – link.

Applications

List of best-in-class, Open source applications edges Windows users toward Linux – link. “LOOP list” here.

TheOpenCD 3.1 released – link.

Top 10 tools for system administration – link.

SPIP, with some unique features that set it apart from other CMSes as well as wikis and blogs, is designed for management of online magazines and similar types of publications – link.

Build a digital animation system: the dynamics and business model and processes of the animation effects industry – link.

Asterisk, an Open-Source PBX, looks like a fun and active project – link.

Databases

PostgreSQL 8.1 released (and this is a major release despite the only 0.1 point version increment) – link. Discussion here.

Sun to integrate PostgreSQL into Solaris 10 – link.

Microsoft SQL 2005 finally released – link.

A survey of content management systems – link.

Internet applications

Firefox 1.5 and Thunderbird 1.5 reviewed – link.

A first look at the Flock social browser – link.

Email client comparison of Outlook Express 6.0, Thunderbird 1.0, and groupware suites Outlook 2003, Evolution 2.2.1.1, and Kontact 1.1 – Part 1, Part 2. Discussions here, here.

Choosing the best IRC client for your needs – link.

CommuniGate Pro 5.0 is an Internet communications server solution that handles email, instant messaging, calendaring, and VoIP – link.

A look at the Apache 2.1 Web server – link.

Setting up RoundCube Webmail on your server – how-to.

Office applications

CrossOver Office 5.0 is a breakthrough in Windows compatibility and Linux desktop integration – link.

Free OpenOffice.org training videos – link.

Adding blocks of content to OO.o documents via AutoText – link.

Everything about envelopes in OO.o 2.0 – link.

Desktop-oriented applications

Pantone and free software – link.

Version 0.43 of Inkscape, a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) drawing tool, is out – link.

Thout Reader from OSoft is a free portable documentation tool that does what it is supposed to do, painlessly and effectively – link.

Introduction to Linux thumbnail viewers, utilities that let you quickly view or manipulate images – link.

Building image galleries with Konqueror – link.

Personal finance software for Linux – link.

MythTV is a software package that lets you turn your Linux-based computer into a television and personal video recorder (PVR) by recording shows onto the hard disk – link.

Create relationship diagrams with Open Source visualization project Graphviz, a nice tool for creating diagrams that combines an easy to use textual description language with a set of graphical visualization algorithms, and is now the reviewer’s tool of choice for creating simple diagrams – link 1, link 2.

Programming

How to write unmaintainable code – link.

Teach yourself programming in 10 years – link.

Hacking on a Unix machine 101 – link.

Free computer books, tutorials, and lecture notes – link.

How to be a programmer: A short, comprehensive, and personal summary – link. Discussion here. Teach yourself programming in 10 years – link.

Donald E. Knuth interviewed – link.

PowerPC assembly programming on the Mac Mini (assembly language skills on a RISC CPU like the PowerPC are very much in demand in the embedded-systems industry) – link.

The computer language guide – link.

The 10 worst software bugs in computing history – link.

Write Portable Code is an introduction for serious coders to developing software for multiple platforms – book review.

Modern memory management – link.

FitNesse is a wiki designed to aid in the creation of tests for software, and a terrific open-source solution to an often difficult problem – link.

Library of pre-written regular expressions plus regular expression online testing engine – link.

Roundup of over 30 cheatsheets for developers – link.

Graphical user interface/Web

A look at Trolltech and Qt 4 – link.

A technical introduction to MiniGUI, a lightweight graphics framework for embedded systems based on uClinux, Linux, eCos, or proprietary real-time OSes – link.

Create web apps with a desktop UI look/feel with OpenLaszlo – link.

Yahoo Widgets package enables cross-platform (Mac OS X, WinXP) development of dynamic, simple, and visually pleasing mini desktop applications. This tutorial teaches you how to build these “widgets” with JavaScript and XML – link.

The Web 2.0 experience continuum – link.

Javascript libraries roundup – link. “Very cool” Javascript effects library – link. JavaScript cheat sheet here.

Design fast-loading, responsive Web pages with XHTML – link. Handy reference guide to all tags related to XHTML – link.

No more tables CSS layout techniques – link. Inspirational CSS designs – link. CSS from the ground up – link.

Real time CSS Editor for Firefox – link.

HTML Character entities cheat sheet – link. CSS cheat sheet – link.

How to shop for Web hosting – link.

C/C++/Java family

C++: A Practical Approach – link.

Free C++ IDE can be downloaded bundled with the MingW compiler as well – link.

Why Java will always be Slower than C++ – link.

Some good Java code examples that can get your project up and runing in no time – link.

Learn what Eclipse is good for – link.

Scripting and high-level languages

Google Sitemaps explored in a new column “Agile Web”, will cover the intersection of dynamic programming languages and web technologies, particularly the sorts of dynamic developments on the web for which some use the moniker, “Web 2.0” – link.

Scriptorium code library 1.6 released – link.

Program in BASIC … online – link. Discussion here.

Awk is useful for simple, quick-and-dirty computational programming, and those who would like to learn C may find Awk a useful stepping stone – tutorial.

Faster, lighter development with Seaside, a framework that includes a continuations-based Web server built on the Squeak dialect of Smalltalk – link. Continuations Made Simple and Illustrated (in Python) – link.

Praise for Python – link.

What is TurboGears (hint: Python-based framework for rapid Web development) – link.

Python scripts and Cheetah templates for generating any kind of text-based content quickly – link.

Getting started with Ruby – link. Another introduction to Ruby programming – link. Discussion here. Learn about Ruby programming with a song tutorial – link.

Ever wanted to learn to program but never could? (uses Ruby) – link. Discussion here.

Is Ruby already shaping up to succeed Java? Several prominent authors, bloggers, and developers respond – link. Evaluation: moving from Java to Ruby on Rails – link.

RubyForge surpasses 1,000 hosted projects – link.

The perfect (Ruby on) Rails/Debian/Lighttpd stack – link.

Shining a Light on LAMP – link.

PHP 5.1.0 released. Changes include a complete rewrite of date handling code, performance improvements, more than 30 new functions, 400 various bug fixes, upgrades to PEAR and the upgrade of PCRE and SQLite libraries – link.

Practical PHP Programming is not available online for free – link. PHP tutorial – link. Object-Oriented PHP programming is practical – link.

Top 21 PHP progamming mistakes – link.

Version 1.0 of Xaraya, a PHP-based web application framework, has been announced – link.

CakePHP is a lightweight framework written in PHP, based on the concepts used in Ruby on Rails – link.

Templating with PHP – link.

Making the Switch from Java to WASP, a PHP5 framework – link. Discussion here. Swat is an open-source web application toolkit built with PHP5 – link.

Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL is meant for web developers of all skill levels – book review.

Ajax, a new approach to web applications – link. What is Ajax, and does it matter? – link. AJAX: what is it good for? – tutorial.

Beginner’s guide to developing Web apps in AJAX – link. Rasmus’s 30 second AJAX tutorial here

The 10 best Ajax links: tutorials and examples – link.

Is it Flash? No it’s AJAX – link. Discussion here.

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is allowing webpages to update as quickly as desktop software, powering applications like Google Maps and attracting money from Silicon Valley investors – link.

Why Microsoft and Google are cleaning up with AJAX – link.

Security & Privacy

Security is very hard, because you have to do everything right all of the time and the enemy only has to do one thing right – link.

Nine principles of security architecture – link.

A very-very complete look at cryptography – link.

Sony appears to have been slapped down fairly hard for its rootkit caper, but it would be a mistake to assume that this sort of incident will not happen again – link. Update here.

How to become an information security professional – link.

Build extra secure Web applications – link.

Database security explained – link.

How To secure your wireless network – link.

Security elite hash out encryption alternatives – link.

Skype explains why security evaluation omitted bug reports – link.

Installing and using Mac GNU Privacy Guard – link.

Is Linux really more secure than Windows? (Yes) – link. Is Linux security ready for the average user? (Yes) – link. Linux is as secure as you want it to be – link.

Overview of iptables from Linux Firewalls, 3rd Edition – link.

Holes, patches, defenses

“Emergency Spyware Guide” compares tools such as spyware blaster, CCleaner, and Ad aware – link.

Enhancing Linux kernel security with grsecurity – link.

Top 10 ways to protect your Linux system – link.

Using ClamWin Free Antivirus to replace proprietary anti-virus software – link.

Avoid common security pitfalls in Greasemonkey – link.

Miscellaneous

A flowchart worth a thousand words, as Rube Goldberg understood – link.

Business

How much money should you be making in IT? – link. Discussion here.

The art of the Open Source deal – link.

An economist’s take on Open Source development – link.

Silicon Graphics Inc. recent delisting from the NYSE (it now trades on the OTC Bulletin Board) is just the latest chapter of a long, painful story that analysts say is loaded with lessons for other companies. However, company executives say SGI’s customer base remains loyal and its technology base is strong enough to sustain it, albeit in narrow vertical markets – link.

The Adobe-Macromedia merger: good news or bad? – analysis.

The copyright chaos of Google Print – link. An open-source rival to Google’s book project – link.

Lenovo finds IBM’s PC division hard to digest – link.

The Internet

On the 15th birthday of the World Wide Web, a look back – link.

Silicon Graphics delisted, becomes penny stock – link.

The venture capital reluctance toward Linux – link.

The end of USENET (again) – link.

Startup wants to get rid of top level domain names – link.

Telecommunications

Is the WiMAX-4G train leaving without Intel? – link.

Really long distance Wi-Fi – link.