W.I.L. Tech-News Highlights for January 2006

Operating Systems

Howto boot from a USB drive – link.

Creating and managing filesystems with Expert Partitioner – link.

With VMware Player and one of the free images that run within it, users can explore new operating systems and environments without going through the inconvenience of formatting or partitioning a hard drive or configuring unfamiliar software – link.

Linux

The Grumpy Editor’s obviously incorrect 2006 predictions – link.

GPL version 3, a first look – link. Linus rejects new GPL licence for Linux – link.

Linux not standing in wait as Microsoft sinks its own ship – link.

Help for Linux newcomers

A quiz that helps decide which version of Linux to install on a desktop has attracted thousands of daily hits even though it is still in beta testing – link.

Live CD distributions that make good desktops – link.

Several popular Live CD distributions including SimplyMEPIS, SLAX, Damn Small Linux, Knoppix, Puppy and, on the Mac side of things, Ubuntu, looked at. Also quick looks at LG3D (Looking Glass 3D) and INSERT (Inside Security Rescue Toolkit) – link.

Just Say No to Microsoft is light on migration details and heavy on anti-Microsoft fervor – book review.

Desktop Linux: If we build it, will they come? – link.

Total computer newbies try Debian, and ultimately stick with … well … KDE – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

25 reasons to convert to Linux – link.

Grafpup Linux (based on Puppy Linux) is a live CD heaven for graphic designers, and includes the GIMP, Inkscape, CinePaint, Scribus, Nvu and more. Considering its ease of use, user-friendliness, easily available help, and its bundled applications, the reviewer gives it a perfect 10 – review.

GhostWriter is a Linux distro for writers that comes bundled with only four major applications: LyX, The GIMP, gv, and the Dillo Web browser. Interesting, but limited – review.

IBLS (Itty Bitty Linux Server) is a modular mini linux server distribution designed to run on old hardware, mainly as a webserver, but also for many other tasks – link.

Technalign is trying to profit by retailing MEPIS, tactics annoy some users – link. MEPIS distributor to implement serial number system – link.

Linux kernel 2.6.15 released – link.

LinuxFilter is a new digg-like Linux news site.

Linux.com’s “CLI Series” latest – Miller’s Quest, Learn to talk awk, OpenSSH + Bash, Use top to monitor PCs across a network. Series index here.

BASH programming introduction How-To – link.

An introduction to services, runlevels, and rc.d scripts – link.

Testing out the Xen live cd – link. open source waits for a xen Moment in 2006 – link.

A talk by GNOME and Ubuntu hacker Jeff Waugh – link.

Ken Starks wants to see Linux succeed on the desktop. He has been beating the drum for Linux on his Lobby4Linux Web site and, more recently on Linux4Austin – interview.

Previewing KDE 4 (due in the fall) – link.

Building a Linux home media center – link.

Alternative input devices under Linux – link.

Synchronizing your Palm PDA with Linux – link.

vile, which stands for “vi like emacs”, attempts to bring together the best of both worlds – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

Dru Lavigne, BSD advocate and creator of the BSD Certification Group initiative – link. Discussion here.

BSD: The other free UNIX family – link.

DragonFly BSD 1.4 released – link.

A quick review of DragonFly BSD 1.4 – link.

FreeBSD 6.0 has its advantages, although lack of certain user-friendly features separates FreeBSD from the desktop OS crowd – link.

Running commercial Linux software on FreeBSD – link.

OpenBSD exposes its inconsistencies in response to security advisory – link.

Anonymity on a Disk: Anonym.OS, based on OpenBSD – link.

Windows

UWIN, or Unix for WINdows basically consists of a set of tools and libraries which helps application developers compile and run Unix applications natively on window – link.

What is wrong with Windows XP N (XP minus media playback functionality), and how to put it right – link.

Windows XP SP3 will not be out until H2 2007 – link.

Bill Gates says Vista is fabtastic and convergent, and stuff like that in keynote speach – link.

Paul Thurrott Switches his Wife to a Mac – link.

Dress up your interface with Stardock’s WindowBlinds 5 – review.

How to make Windows XP shut down faster, all in five steps – link.

Build a Windows Vista system today – link.

Mac

How Apple could mess up, again – link.

“Ten Things I Hate About Mac OS X” – link. But this guy likes it – review.

Apple’s OS 9 crowd thrown out in the cold by latest developments – link.

Apple’s initial Intel core duo iMac is slower than the G5-based machines for most applications. You are probably better off waiting for truly optimized and stable version of your software designed for the new platform – link 1, link 2.

For $1299, the iMac Core Duo is a good buy – review. Discussion here. Steve Jobs interviewed – link.

MacInteltoshes will happily run Windows – link. FAQ: Will your Intel-based Mac run Windows? – link.

First glance at Apple’s new products – link.

Apple makes the switch from iMac G5 to iMac Core Duo, with tantalizing glimpses of what we can expect – link.

Mac OS X Server basics of share points and home directories – link.

Intel and more inside: Steve Jobs’s Macworld keynote address is some of the best theatre you will ever see – link. Discussion here.

Other OS’s

GNU/DOS 2006, a distribution of FreeDOS, is released. New features include an easy installation/upgrade, package management utilities, Arachne GPL version 1.89 Web browser, OpenGEM Release 5, and vim 6.4 – link.

Applications

Partition images with Partimage, Partimaged – link.

Open source applications and games for Symbian phones – link.

Optical character recognition is an uphill battle for open source – link.

Open source gaming is not likely to equal or surpass what the proprietary Windows-based world offers soon, but there are a number of positive developments – link.

Databases

How to set up database replication in MySQL – link.

Ingres the dark horse of the enterprise software pack? – link.

Internet applications

Firefox hits the magic (?) 10% figure – link. Firefox 1.5.0.1 released, a security and stability update to 1.5 – link.

Thunderbird 1.5 is ready for download – link.

SeaMonkey project picks up where halted Mozilla Suite left off – link 1, link 2. SeaMonkey 1.0 released – link.

AOL’s Netscape 8.1 adds spyware scanner, bundles, but is still Windows-only, and is as U.S.-centric (if not more) than 8.0 – review.

AllPeers is simply a peer-to-peer (P2P) technology that allows you to share digital content with a trusted-buddy list, using Firefox as the front-end. It may be FireFox’s “Killer App” – link.

BitTorrent clients reviewed – link.

“Opera is faster, more secure, more compliant than Firefox” – link.

Blog platform WordPress 2.0 is better than ever – review.

phpMyVisites is an easy-to-use program that provides essential Web traffic information – link.

ISPConfig is a free software hosting control panel – review.

Office applications

Point & Click OpenOffice.org! eases switch from MS Office to OO.org 2.0 – book review.

WorldLabel.com, a maker of labels for envelopes, jewel cases, and other purposes, has released a package of more than 50 label template pages for OO.o – link.

OO.o Label Templates 1.0 released – link.

Searching for and replacing text or strings in OO.o – link.

Creating a book with OO.o Writer – link.

KOffice developers, with version 1.5 scheduled for March, start collecting ideas for version 2 – link.

StarOffice Enterprise Tools are flawed but helpful – link.

A guide to AbiWord’s server mode, which includes a command interface. Its main use appears to be scripted document format conversion – link.

Corel has a winner in its new WordPerfect Office X3 productivity suite – link.

Apple’s iWork emerges as rival to Microsoft Office – link.

Desktop-oriented applications

Painting program Krita takes a different approach to working with pixels, simulating the tools, materials, and work flow of a real-world artist, who creates a picture out of physical “stuff” vs. pixels or shapes. Release 1.4.2 supports advanced features like CMYK color, pressure-sensitivity for tablets, and color management via LittleCMS – review.

New features on the way for Inkscape – link.

Open source accounting package TurboCASH claims superior functionality to its closed source rivals and is licensed under the GPL, but is Windows-only. Now the project leader is debating porting to Linux – link. (Other open source accounting packages include SQL-Ledger, GnuCash, and Quasar Accounting. Quasar review here.) More discussion here.

Using open-source tools for documenting academic-quality research – link. (One commenter recommends MATLAB-clone Octave.)

Gentium, an award-winning font, adds a touch of elegance to the free software world – link.

Is Microsoft’s Sparkle a Flash Killer? – link. Discussion here.

Flash players for Linux – link.

Creating and manipulating images with gd – link.

Image repair with GREYCstoration – link.

Synfig 2D vector animation program opens source – link.

POV-Ray illustrates complexity of changing licenses – link.

Pylize is a Python-based command-line tool that lets one use familiar HTML coding techniques to build presentations – link.

GStreamer’s MP3 for Linux – link.

Automating Windows with Autohotkey – link.

Angry, drunken dwarves lay seige to gaming empires – link.

Programming

Software engineering, not computer science – link.

Uncovering hidden agendas that cause projects to fail – link.

Graphical user interface / Web

The .NET API patent, mono, and GNOME – link.

All aboard AJAX, HTML Canvas, and the Supertrain – link.

First impressions count in Website design – link.

Conglomerate XML Editor reaches basic functionality. Although it is still a bit raw, the potential elegance of its interface remains – review.

Mastering Ajax, Part 2: Make asynchronous requests with JavaScript and Ajax – link. Discussion here.

AJAX design patterns for Web services – Part 1, Part 2. Discussion here.

C / C++ / Java family

Everything you ever wanted to know about C types – link.

Sneek peek of the next version of standard C++ – link.

The future of Java – link.

JFreeChart is the first open source, Java-based charting library to reach the 1.0 milestone – review.

Scripting and high-level languages

REALbasic 2006 for Windows, Macintosh and Linux ships – link.

Rexx, the practical programming language – link.

What is Perl 6? – link 1, link 2.

Analyzing HTML with Perl – link.

Simplify PHP Development with WASP – link. Discussion here. (Cake and Symfony are also recommended.)

Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional is overall perhaps the best Python books the reviewer has read – book review. “Instant Python” crashcourse on the book’s author’s homepage here.

“Discover Python”, Part 8: Reading and writing data using Python’s input and output functionality – link. “Discover Python” series index – link.

Embedding Python in your C programs – link.

Nokia to release the source code for its Python for S60 Platform software package – link.

Premier issue of online magazine Ruby Code & Style is published – link.

Security & Privacy

A naive user’s guide to running Windows more securely – link.

Malware is getting nastier, says Fortinet – link.

Novell releases source code to AppArmour application security software under GPL and sponsors a project to maintain and improve it – link.

Secure Shell standard moving forward – link.

Bandwidth monitoring with iptables – link.

Add an extra layer of security with Systrace, which monitors and controls what an application can access on a system by creating and enforcing access policies for system calls – link.

Security Auditor’s Research Assistant (SARA) is a kinder, gentler, easier to use, and more updated auditing tool than its predecessor, SATAN – link.

U.S.-CERT’s FUD regarding Linux security – link.

U.S./Canadian government agency dragging its heels on OpenSSL validation – link. Department of Computer Security? What a joke – link.

Privacy is not the only reason to be worried about ID cards … there is also the bozos the government is getting to install the system that runs them, says Corporate Watch – link. IT industry prepares for the worst over ID cards – link.

Nearly 9 out of 10 organizations were hit with computer-security incidents last year, according to the FBI’s latest Computer Crime Survey – link.

Secure Java apps on Linux using MD5 Crypt – link.

Skype is a good tool for hackers, claim security researchers – link.

Google’s professed aim, according to its founders, is to know more about you than you yourself do – link.

The threat from “podslurping”: using a portable storage device like an iPod to steal corporate data – link.

Holes, patches, defenses

Windows has wireless hole – link.

Windows Zero Day Bug was a back door claims Steve Gibson. Bunk, but you should still patch it – link 1, link 2.

Is your firewall spying on you? Israeli company checkpoint’s Zone Alarm gets rumbled – link. Zone Labs says its firewall is no spy – link.

Spam, advertising

The Center for Democracy and Technology has asked the FTC to stop a pop-up ad company from distributing its products that generate online ads – link.

Miscellaneous

Freedom to Tinker’s Ed Felten has has an interesting set of 2006 predictions – link.

The Open Source as Prior Art discussion begins – link.

Business

Swedish students concoct music industry’s nightmare – link.

Why UserFriendly (the comic strip) went private again – link.

A proposed SonyBMG settlement – link. Digital Rights Manifesto revealed – link. The revenge of the Digital Rights Manifesto – link.

DRM is a complete lie. It has never successfully “protected” a single thing. It hurts users and the companies making it, but is the only way to keep rivals at bay. Lobbing a few bullets at the users is a low price to pay for that – link. RIAA and MPAA call a halt on digital progress – link.

Shakeout looms in booming digital music sector – link.

Is Real Network’s Rhapsody.com music service to non-Windows clients worth paying for? – link.

Is Google worth its currently high share price? – link.

Consultants report corporations embracing, saving with open source – link.

The Open Source community should not stigmatize the suits – link.

Dell on top as PC shipments soar in Q4. Notebook share of U.S. PC sales estimated at 38% – link.

There was a time when IT companies fought for data centers, the loyalty of IT managers and the corporate shilling. Now SmackDown 2006 takes place in The Living Room, but convergence is still a some-day thing – link.

IT systems users are facing increasingly standardized platforms, on which an increasing variety of applications and services can be built far more easily than in the past – link.

The Internet

Become your own Web host in 75 steps – link.

A tempest in a Wikipedia – link.

Sex.com sold for $14 million. Owner plans to chase $65 million in awarded damages – link 1, link 2.

Telecommunications

802.11n Wi-Fi spec nailed down, at last – link.

200Mbps Wi-Fi in offing prompts big mesh dream – link.

Mobile high speed data gets faster – link.