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

Operating Systems

Linux

Software freedom vs. software utility – link.

Free Software Foundation supports average users with high-priority list – link.

Help for Linux newcomers

Giving desktop Linux a try – link.

Linux Technology Center in upstate New York is bridging that gap and bringing both students and small business the benefits of Linux and open source – link.

Is Freespire a great or awful idea? – link.

Beginning Ubuntu Linux is recommended over any other introductory Linux book, at least for now – link.

Looking for a Linux distribution for an old laptop – link.

Frugalware Linux 0.4 has the makings of a fine distribution. It aims to be as simple as possible while still providing the user with a comfortable, enjoyable experience, and it is well on its way to achieving that goal – link.

Trinity Rescue Kit is a small yet powerful bootable Linux distribution that rescues, repairs, resets passwords, and clones dead Linux and Windows installations – link.

GParted live CD is an excellent open source tool for mucking about with disk partition – link.

Dropline 2.14.0 lets you add the GNOME desktop environment to Slackware – link.

Linus Torvalds comments on kernel “overhaul” – here.

Controlling your locale with environment variables – link.

Linux.com’s “CLI Series” latest – Using script to log your sessions, Bash complete, A better CD encoder (abcde), Viewing pictures on the console with fbida, Executing jobs once. Series index here.

GNU grep’s new features – link.

Emacs tips – Windows and buffers.

Super-speedy KDE keyboard shortcuts – link.

Laid back at Linuxfest Northwest – link.

FreedomHEC is an informal two-day conference discussing hardware issues under Linux – link.

Comparing X.Org’s open-source ATI Radeon driver vs. ATI’s official but proprietary fglrx display driver – link.

Google releases photo organizing and editing tool Picasa beta for Linux, and 100+ Wine patches – link.

Automate Linux installation and recovery with SystemImager – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

FreeBSD 6.1 is another step in the right direction – review.

OpenBSD 3.9 reviewed – link. Theo de Raadt interviewed – link.

Mac

Apple bobs for suckers with Boot Camp – link.

Apple may be using open source, but it is not an open source company – link.

Applications

Streamline software inventory management with OCSNG – link.

Faster remote desktop connections with FreeNX – link.

Internet applications

Comparing browser speeds – link.

Opera 9.0 beta continues Opera’s record of innovation, adding features no other popular browser can match – link.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3 released – link.

Keeping Thunderbird from breaking – link.

Swiki is a wiki written in the Squeak SmallTalk dialect. It is easy to install, easy to maintain, and a great tool for maintaining documentation – link.

Putting MediaWiki to use in an organization – link.

Drupal 4.7 brings major short- and long-term benefits to users and distributors of the system, and puts Drupal back at the cutting edge of Content Management System (CMS) development – link.

Office applications

Creating professional documentation with Linux tools – link.

Microsoft Office to get a dose of OpenDocument – link.

The three major OpenDocument capable office suites/word processors examined – link.

WordPerfect Office X3 is another chapter in a long, sad story, and the possibility of a happy ending diminishes with each new release – review.

Docco is a little application designed specifically to index documents and search inside them – link.

Convert HTML to PDF with PHP 5 – link.

Desktop-oriented applications

GnuCash 2.0 coming soon – link.

Bibble 4.7 is a commercial program on Windows and Linux that processes and converts RAW digital photography files to publishable formats such as JPG, PNG, and TIFF – link.

Elephants Dream is a new 11-minute animated short film produced by the Orange Blender Project which was modeled, animated, rendered, and composited using open source software, and all of the original content and data files have been released under a Creative Commons license. It is a showcase for Blender’s prime-time readiness – link.

2D animation software suggestions sought – link.

Introducing free software into a 2nd grade classroom – link.

Transcoding and streaming DVD films with VLC media player – link.

worldKit is a GPL Flash-based lightweight geographical information system (GIS) that allows you to create interactive maps without getting too deep into all the intricacies of GIS – link.

Programming

Multi-threaded programming makes you crazy? – link.

A first look at Vim 7 – link. Discussion here. Vim tips – Moving around using marks and jumps, Folding fun, Using viewports.

Graphical user interface, Web

GTK+ 2.9.0 (development) is the first development release leading up to GTK+ 2.10 – link.

Stick to the ECMAscript – link.

Object-Oriented Javascript – link.

A step-by-step guide for incorporating SVG into Web pages and applications – link.

5 CSS tips – link.

Considering Ajax – Part 1: Cut through the hype, Part 2: Change your life with mashups.

Collection of AJAX tutorials – link.

Adobe introduces Spry AJAX framework – link.

Web 2.0 recipes with PHP + DHTML – link.

C/C++/Java family

A tutorial on pointers and arrays in C – link.

Toward a free Java – link.

Sun to make Java more Linux-friendly – link.

Scripting and high-level languages

Embeddable scripting with Lua – link.

Rails-inspired PHP frameworks – link. 5 next-generation PHP frameworks – link.

Shed Skin Python-to-C++ compiler 0.0.8 released – link.

Pattern matching, S-expressions, and domain specific languages in Ruby – link.

A fairly exhaustive list of the options allowed when configuring a Ruby on Rails application – link.

Security & Privacy

TorPark is a secure, anonymous, and portable Web browser – link. Torbutton is a plugin for Mozilla Firefox that enables users to easily and rapidly switch Tor on and off – link.

RouterOS is a good option for small companies with a restricted budget. Thanks to the WinBox application even a novice Linux administrator can make good use of the firewall and set up a VPN – link.

Three rules for safer Wi-Fi away from home – link. The right way to run a Wi-Fi cafe – link.

Password hashing using PHP and MySQL – link.

Antivirus protection for the really worried – link.

Blue Security folds under spammer’s wrath – link.

Miscellaneous

The Free Software Foundation prepares a campaign to inform the general public about the dangers of digital rights management (DRM) technologies – link.

Oregon lab plays Web host to the stars of open source – link.

Faster computers, bigger monitors, fancier desktop environments, and more expensive software applications can never replace the power and creativity of your own focused attention – link.

OSAPA initiative will combat unworthy software patents – link.

“Microsoft will lose to Google” – link.

Silicon Graphics files for Chapter 11 – link.

ICANN chokes off .xxx porn registry domain – link.

Something is broken at Google – link.

GotVMail is a virtual PBX seller that says it delivers “big company” telephone sound and functionality for a small company price, on an open source platform – link.