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

Operating Systems

How-to resize your Windows partition to make room for Linux, etc. – link.

The reasons alternative OS developers get no help – link.

Linux

Debunking common GNU/Linux myths – link.

A certifiable path to Linux Jobs – link.

Xorg 7.0/6.9.0, the first major version release of the X Window System in more than a decade, is released – link. XGL, realistically – link.

A 2005 retrospective, overall a good year for the Linux/free software community – link. The LWN.net 2005 Linux and free software timeline – link.

Help for Linux newcomers

Learn UNIX in 10 minutes (a one page introduction to the basic commands for getting started using the UNIX shell) – link.

Desktop Linux book roundup – link.

Linux Made Easy is a basic introduction to a Linux distribution, Xandros 3 that is so similar to Windows that you really cannot even feel the difference. Its main defect is that it is short on troubleshooting advice – link.

Do Linux User Groups (LUGs) still matter? – review.

Versora Progression Desktop allows you to transfer files and settings from Windows desktops to Linux desktops in an automated fashion – link.

Adding Windows fonts in Linux – link.

Is your business ready to take the open source plunge? Five leading desktop Linux distributions tested, with Ubuntu Linux 5.10 emerging as the editor’s choice – link.

A brief look at some of the changes on the Linux distribution landscape during 2005 – link.

A new round of Asian Linux releases – link.

The Debian System: Concepts and Techniques is a perfect complement to the standard Linux references – book review.

On the viability of a “Just works with Linux” hardware database – link.

Linux desktop keeps getting better with KDE 3.5 – review. GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition – link.

On organizing one’s Unix file system – link.

Linux.com’s “CLI Series” latest – More on SSH, Daily aliases, Introducing rss2email. Series index here.

Fish, the friendly interactive shell – link.

Tango is yet another project aiming to clean up the Linux desktop – link.

Sed introduction and tutorial – link.

Some useful XEmacs customizations – link.

Options for building and configuring an inexpensive, expandable, Linux-based backup server – link.

How to set up Mandriva 2006 Free as a web server – link.

Understanding the Linux Kernel, 3rd Edition – book review.

A report on FOSS.IN 2005, held in Bangalore – link.

Taking KDE 3.5 for a ride with SUSE – link. Why KDE rulez – link.

XGL is a version of the X server built on top of the OpenGL API, which Novell is putting some work into while being cagey about showing its code so far – link.

A certifiable path to Linux Jobs – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

DragonFlyBSD 1.4 to be released after Christmas – link.

NetBSD 3.0 released – link.

Opening Solaris opens door to community, derivative distros – link.

BeleniX is a free live CD based on the OpenSolaris kernel. With few applications and lacking an installation script, the Live CD does little more than slake a nerd’s thirst for a taste of Solaris – link.

Other OS’s

The Year in Review: Apple – link.

Beginners guide to running DOS games/applications on Windows XP/2000 – link.

PearPC, the PowerPC processor emulator capable of running Apple’s Mac OS X on x86, has released version 0.4.0 after more than a year’s wait – link.

AROS updates – link.

ReactOS 0.2.9 released – link.

SkyOS Beta 9 reviewed – link.

Syllable 0.6.0 released – link. Syllable 0.6.0a released – link.

Applications

RaptorHead bundles OpenOffice.org, TurboCASH, the GIMP, Gaim, Firefox and some installation scripts on a CD, and sells it in retail stores to Windows users for $20 – link.

Creating appealing video software demo screencasts in Linux using Istanbul and Wink – link.

CrossOver Office 5.0 offers support for several versions of Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Quicken, and a host of other Windows software at a lower price than alternatives such as Win4Lin and VMware (which offer more functionality) – review.

Favorite sysadmin utilities – link.

Databases

A guide to Open Source databases – link.

Bringing MySQL compatibility to PostgreSQL – link.

Sleepycat releases Berkeley DB 4.4 – link.

Internet applications

Fun with Firefox 1.5 – link. Firefox 1.5 stability problems, or not? – link.

Seamonkey beta improves on Mozilla suite legacy – link.

GNOME-based browsers Galeon and Epiphany are remerging – link. Galeon 2.0.0 released – link.

Forthcoming Internet Explorer version 7.0 is going to make alternative browsers’ lives very difficult –

– link 1, link 2.

Opera quietly ships mini browser, for users of Java-capable cell phones – link.

Test Web browsers for compliance with Web standards – link.

Thunderbird 1.5 gets ready to fly – link.

Lots of people use Microsoft email. Which is not to say they like it – link.

Putting RSS to work: Immediate Action Feeds – link.

Creating a Wiki with kwiki – link.

Hacking Asterisk VoIP software and Ruby on Rails with RAGI – link.

Top 10 innovative Web 2.0 applications of 2005 – link.

OpenOffice.org news

OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 released, bringing a myriad of bug fixes and feature enhancements – link 1, link 2.

Creating database forms in OpenOffice 2.0 – link.

Master documents are a feature of OO.o Writer that are useful if you ever write anything longer than 30 pages, especially a document that shares some parts with other documents – link.

Desktop-oriented applications

Pixel is a bitmap image editor with a feature set rivaling Photoshop’s and outstripping the GIMP in several key areas, that runs on Linux and Windows. (It is not free or Open Source.) – link.

GTK-based 2D animation program Synfig released under GPL – link.

Blender 2.40 released – link 1, link 2.

Adobe completes acquisition of Macromedia on December 3 – link. Adobe and Macromedia to die together, alone – link.

High Dynamic Range file formats deliver more range, color depth, and accuracy than the standard digital image formats – link.

Introduction to Adobe’s RAW-format converter Camera Raw – link.

The Grumpy Editor’s guide to music managers – link.

Editing WMA files with Audacity – link.

LAME Mp3 vs FAAC AAC audio compression codecs compared – link.

Programming

A programmer’s bookshelf (suggestions) – link.

Survey shows that Open Source developers jump on bugs quickly, and are open to closed source tech – link.

Learn C++, Java, HTML, Visual Basic, Direct 3D, SQL, with more on the way, though Flash videos. These videos combined with a book will get any novice on their feet – link.

Graphical user interface / Web

Programming Qt applications in Python – tutorial.

GTK+ fundamentals – Part 1 , Part 2. Discussion here.

Pantone and hexidecimal colour conversion chart – link.

Born-again VRML makes the Web safe for 3D – link.

The future of HTML – Part 1: WHATWG. Discussion here. Why is the web the way it is today? – link.

XML 2005: Tipping Sacred Cows – link.

CSS How to’s –
Creating a Photographic Gallery
Create a “two step” photographic gallery without thumbnails
Create flick Animations as a Flash or GIF animation alternative
Create a frames layout
Style a definition list
Working with color and images using CSS
Add fluid borders to your boxes
Style an unordered list
Have muliple classes under one tag
Use CSS to solve minimum width problems in IE
Position horizontal unordered lists
Show more info or details of an image – link..

Create more flexible, mobile device ready, Web pages with XHTML and CSS – link.

What makes a good Web font – link.

Learning JavaScript basics – tutorial.

“The JavaScript Diaries”: a nonprofessional programmer shares his experience learning JavaScript –
Part 1 (Introduction)
Part 2 (Data Types & Variables)
Part 3 (Operators)
Part 4 (Functions)
Part 5 (Conditional Statements and Loops)
Part 6 (Objects)
Part 7 (Browser-Based Objects)
Part 8 (Window Methods)
Part 9 (Window Event Handlers)
Part 10 (Navigator, Screen, History and Location Objects)
Part 11 (Arrays – Part 1)
Part 12 (Multiple Array Types)

Top 10 custom JavaScript functions of all time – link.

Quick guide to get up to speed with JavaScript toolkit Dojo’s major strengths, Widgets and Events – link.

TinyMCE, a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor, version 2.0 is available – link.

C / C++ / Java family

Java Roadmap, a practical road map to the Free Software and Open Source alternatives – link.

Java is so 1990s – link. Discussion here.

Scripting and high-level languages

The status of the GNU Fortran project – link.

FreeBASIC, an open-source, free, 32-bit compiler, with the syntax the most compatible possible with MS-QuickBASIC, but with new features such as pointers, unsigned data types, inline-assembly, and a pre-processor, version 0.15b released – link.

10 places you must use Ajax – link.

Ajax sucks most of the time – link.

Ajax In Action is an ideal initiation and introduction to this brave new world – book review.

Mastering Ajax Websites – link.

Ruby on Rails 1.0 released – link 1, link 2.

Ruby on Rails is just one facet of what makes Ruby great – link.

Ruby book sales surpass Python. Does Python have an answer to Ruby on Rails? – link.

How to use the Selenium test tool for functional testing of a Ruby on Rails and Ajax application – link.

Mark Lutz, one of the most well known names in Python, explains why he feels Python is now a major programming language – link.

Profiling and optimizing Python – link.

Debugging techniques for PHP programmers – link.

PHP 5 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach is a useful book for the programmer’s library – link.

Smarty, a PHP templating and presentation engine, helps developers build applications in modules by separating the presentation layer from the application code – link.

Testing PHP code with PHPUnit – link.

Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL is an intermediate to advanced-level guide for programmers and developers – book review.

Writing more HTML-friendly PHP – link.

Larry Wall on Perl 6 – link.

Logic Programming with Perl and Prolog – link.

Security & Privacy

Rootkits, cybercrime and OneCare: The year in IT security – link.

Creating secure wireless access points with OpenBSD and OpenVPN – link.

Browser developers meet, see eye to eye on security – link.

Zone Labs launcheds aggressive drive to woo users left high and dry by Symantec’s discontinuation of the Sygate firewall – link.

Three security-related books, Linux Server Security, 2nd Edition, Hardening Linux, Hardening Apache reviewed – link.

Security reasons to use the OpenDocument format – link.

Bandwidth monitoring with iptables – link.

Publicly funded free software security audits – link.

Spam, advertising

Advertisers ditch pop-ups for new tricks – link.

Rumors of spam’s death are greatly exaggerated – link.

Miscellaneous

Free software as a social movement … Richard Stallman interviewed – link. Discussion here.

When is a standard truly open? When it is universal. Reflections on Massachusetts and Microsoft’s XML – link.

Ray Kurzweil’s faith in the future – interview.

It is 2006. Do you know where your data is? – link.

European “Galileo” super-GPS is looking good, must have the U.S. military seriously scared – link.

Business

Advice for the unemployed CS graduate – link.

Sun wants to be the Badger in Web 2.0. Why this is not a good idea – comment.

A look at the Patent Commons Project and Open Invention Network: something new, innovative, and powerful is now standing guard over Linux and other free software projects – link.

As Microsoft’s growth slows, rivals stake out their own territory – link.

Microsoft, for all its midlife atherosclerosis, may be ready to rock and roll again – link.

The Internet, Telecommunications

Mirrordot, a cure for the “Slashdot effect” – link.

Digg’s founders talk about Digg, its history, why Digg works, and Digg’s international aspirations, and where Digg is going in the future – link.

18,000 World of Warcraft cheaters banned – link.

Zazzle taps consumers’ need for self-expression and instant gratification – link.

Tim Berners-Lee, the man behind HTML, the first web server (running on a NeXT cube), and the first web browser, has started his own weblog – link.

Liars on Internet breed verbal vermin and may threaten freedom – link.

The state of telecommunications and the future role of Telcos – link.