W.I.L. Tech-News Highlights for September/October 2006

Operating Systems

Windows will beat Linux threat, say academics – link.

Linux

Why the GPL rocketed Linux to success – link.

Linux Kernel 2.6.18 is a go – link.

Free Linux Disk project delivers first bulk shipment – link.

Joe Barr looks back at a decade of using Linux – link.

The Family Guide to Digital Freedom website and an accompanying book attempts to provide a guide for non-technically inclined computers users to the advantages of open standards and free software, and a critique of the FOSS communities – link.

Help for Linux newcomers

What is the best “Windows replacement” Linux for beginners? Top three picks are MEPIS Linux, Xandros Linux and Freespire – link.

Must have applications for Linux beginners – link.

Taking the Linux plunge – link. Welcoming Windows users to Linux – link.

IBM’s Linux Client Migration Cookbook, Version 2 is a tome ... in a good way – link.

Linux for mere mortals – link.

A new batch of easier-to-use versions is putting Linux within reach of regular folks – link.

High-tech social enterprise reaps free software’s benefits – link.

Linux and open source unlocks options for many small-to-medium sized businesses – link.

Desktop Linux distributions, from A to Z – link.

Linux XP Desktop: A Windows face on an old Linux base – link.

Two music-oriented live CDs reviewed – link.

How to set up a server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters using – CentOS 4.4, Mandriva 2007 Free Edition, Ubuntu 6.10.

The perfect Xen 3.0.3 setup for Debian Sarge – link. How to install VMware Server on Debian Sarge – link.

Linux From Scratch creator interviewed – link.

Using Linux on (very) old hardware – link. Comments here and here

FVWM-Crystal is a pretty, functional and ultra-fast desktop environment for Linux and Unix, based on FVWM – link.

Animate the desktop with Xgl and Compiz – link.

Overview of modern fancy UNIX desktop systems – link.

Are source Linux distributions, such as Gentoo, their own worst enemies? – link.

Communities should help small Linux OEMs – link.

Linux.com’s “CLI Series” latest – Lightweight Conky is a system monitor powerhouse, Kismet sniffs out Wi-Fi access, See changes word by word with dwdiff, Customize your comics with dailystrips, Running multiple jobs with xjobs, Use cURL to measure Web site statistics, Command-line contact management. Series index here.

Replacing init with Upstart – link.

Device drivers and non-disclosure agreements – link. ATI’s new (proprietary) Linux drivers drop support for older Radeons – link. nVidia 1.0-9XXX Linux drivers previewed – link.

What you should (and should not) expect from 64-bit Linux – link.

KDE celebrates 10th anniversary – link.

KDE’s Konqueror the Linux killer app? – link Discussion here.

GNOME 2.16 arrives – link 1, link 2, link 3. Good bits in GNOME 2.16 – link.

LinuxWorld 2006 keynote talks available online – link.

Is the future of Desktop Linux “going thin”? – link.

Watch out for brain dump open source certification test prep sites – link.

Linux Smart Homes for Dummies can help you make your house the envy of the neighborhood – book review.

BSDs, other Unixes

DesktopBSD is a customized FreeBSD installation that mainly consists of the DesktopBSD Tools and a collection of configuration files and software for desktop use – link.

FreeBSD 6.2 beta-1 is available – link.

NetBSD”s first “bugathon” a success – link. Discussion here.

Confessions of a recovering NetBSD zealot – link.

OpenBSD 4.0 pre-orders available – link.

How to install OpenBSD as a guest OS under VMware Server, and possibly other VMware products – link.

PC-BSD founder and lead developer interviewed – link. Why high-end enterprise hardware solution provider iXsystems bought PC-BSD – link 1, link 2.

Nexenta is a GNU-based OS built on top of the OpenSolaris kernel and runtime. It actually works well, and is shaping up to be a very interesting OS – link.

A look at Solaris 10 6/06 – link.

OpenSolaris live CD distributions show promise – link.

UNIX productivity tips in an office setting – link.

Windows and DOS

FreeDOS 1.0 born after 12-year gestation – link 1, link 2. FreeDOS 9 (pre-1.0) reviewed – link.

A guide to installing, using FreeDOS 1.0 in Linux – link.

Windows PE 2.0: a tiny version of Windows – link.

Microsoft delivers yet another new Vista build – link. Vista might be delayed until Easter – link.

Inside Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 – link. Vista RC1 gives great gaming experience – link.

If only we knew then what we know now about Windows XP – link.

Microsoft kills off XP SP1 support – link.

Two nifty open source tools for portable Windows computing – link.

SudoWn brings Unix-like sudo to Windows 2000 and up – link.

Mac

Mac OS X to exceed sales of x86 commercial Linux by mid-2008? – link.

The Apple III, meant to be Apple’s bold entry into the business market, ended as Apple’s first commercial failure. But is spawned both the Lisa and Macintosh projects, efforts that would save Apple – link.

Other OS’s

OSNews alternative OS article contest results – link.

History of the Commodore Amiga – link.

AmiKit is a freeware compilation of more than 300 of the finest Amiga programs (free/shareware) – link.

AROS is almost feature-for-feature complete vs. AmigaOS 3.x, and has excelled many of the original design specifications – link.

The slightly strange world of RISC OS – link.

A look at Syllable 0.6.1 – link.

Applications

Turn your Linksys SOHO router into a powerhouse with DD-WRT – link.

DIY document management system with Simple Groupware – link.

New features in Vim 7.0 – link.

Super Grub Disk delivers easy boot record recovery. SGD also works with a variety of operating systems and supports all the basic options needed to manipulate how a hard drive boots – link.

A look at a Linux-powered helicopter simulator – link.

Open source systems management software – link.

ApacheCon 2006 proved that Linux is not the only brightly shining star in the world of free and open source software – link 1, link 2.

Databases

PostgreSQL 8.2 beta released – link 1, link 2.

Glom is a graphical database front-end that needs a bit of polish, but is already a winner over Microsoft Access and Filemaker – link.

Internet applications

“Forgotten” browsers Deepnet, Netscape, and Seamonkey reviewed – link.

Firefox 2.0 available – link. Bill’s Big List of Firefox 2.0 Compatible Extensions number almost 1,000 – link.

Firefox 2.0 is a solid improvement – link.

Zotero, a Firefox extension that helps you manage research sources, is a seriously useful research tool – link.

Qualcomm announces that it will be working with Mozilla to make an open-source version of Eudora based on Thunderbird – link.

Firefox, Thunderbird versions 1.5.0.7 security and bug-fix updates explained – link.

Konqueror may not be able to replace Firefox as a Web browser for every site, but it does a lot more than just simple browsing – link.

“IE for Linux” hack offers one more reason not to boot Windows – link.

Es4Linux offers the simpler way to have Internet Explorer running on Linux (or any OS running Wine) – link.

Gaim 2.0 first look – link.

Jabbin is a Jabber client that does simple text chatting, file transfers, and chatting with contacts from other IM protocols such as MSN and ICQ, and also VoIP calling. It is not so hard to use, but the first impression says the opposite – link.

Linux-based LiveKiosk offers low-cost browsing – link.

Can open source messaging servers replace Microsoft Exchange? – link. Scalix is sneaking Linux in through the corporate mailbox – link. Checking out Open-Xchange – review. Zimbra seems to be on par with Exchange in many ways, and ahead of Exchange for hosting providers and in collaboration features – link.

Office applications

The open source OCR landscape got dramatically better recently when Google released the Tesseract engine as OSS – link.

A survey of the DocBook landscape – link.

LyX, a GUI front-end to the TeX typesetting system, version 1.4.3 improves stability and Windows support – link. Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips – link.

OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 released – link. What is next for OpenOffice.org – link.

OOo plug-in plan set for debut – link. OOo to get Firefox extensions and more – link.

Free online training portal for OOo 2.0 users – link.

OOo gives chart module a brand new look – link.

OOoBasic crash course – link.

KOffice 1.6 released – link.

KOffice has seen a huge surge in exciting feature development in the past year, putting it in the same league as OpenOffice.org and The GIMP, and even surpassing them in places. Painting module Krita is now leading an effort to develop an open graphics file format, OpenRaster, which fits nicely into the OpenDocument craze – link.

Improve your writing with the GNU style checkers – link.

NeoOffice is a port of the OpenOffice.org codebase to native Mac OS X APIs and toolkits. The result is an office suite that is integrated with OS X core functionality – link.

Writely, Google’s online word processor, is not best of breed among the online office tools – review. Online word processors compared – link.

Desktop-oriented applications

Before hiring a professional designer to create a cover for your book, consider creating a simple yet elegant book cover using Kooka scanning software and Inkspace – link.

KToon has a small learning curve and an intuitive interface, making it an excellent choice for simple animation within Linux – link.

ImageMagick Tricks shows users a good reason to use the CLI – book review.

The GIMP’s next-generation imaging core demonstrated – link.

Flash Player 9 beta for Linux is available – link.

Visualize chaos with Fyre – link.

Multi-track recording with Audacity – link. A deeper look into Audacity – link.

Task management made simple with todo.txt and Tux ToDo – link.

GnoTime, the GNOME Time Tracker, is a lightweight task/time tracking tool that is easy to use and not overloaded with project management features, but it suffers from weak reporting tools – link.

A look at MythTV 0.20 – link.

Create training videos with pyvnc2swf, a program that turns screen input into video files – link.

MP3FS lets you mount a directory hierarchy of FLAC audio files and transparently present them as MP3s to software and hardware devices alike – link.

LaCie announces free Linux-based LightScribe CD/DVD Labeler system – link.

Programming

The future of programming – link.

10 programming languages you should learn right now – link. Discussion here.

Turbo Explorer products are a significant, free subset of Borland’s professional tools. Four “personalities” target a different combination of programming language and platform: Turbo Delphi and Turbo C++ for Windows, and Turbo Delphi and Turbo C# for .NET – review. Discussion here.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML), has firmly established itself as the lingua franca of the object oriented development world. Learning UML 2.0 offers a fast introduction to all of those funny diagrams that look really cool – book review.

Unicode 5.0 discussed – link.

Co-authors of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change discuss subject – link.

A non-technical overview of how XGL works – link.

Graphical user interface, Web

Build cross-platform GUIs using wxWidgets – link. Programming C++ GUIs with the wxWidgets Library – link. wxBlog is a new blog site for discussion about wxWidgets.

PyKDE maintainer Jim Bublitz interviewed – link.

Qt 4.2 released – link. Qt 4.2 intro here

Tim, co-editor of the XML 1.0 specification and co-driving the development of Atom, today fulfills dual role as tireless Netizen-evangelist and Director of Web Technologies for Sun Microsystems, and advocates for a more elegant, platform-independent and user-friendly Internet – interview.

4Suite XML, a Python-based XML processing library, version 1.0 announced – link.

COWS Ajax takes over where Ajax leaves off – link.

How to make a simple news reading using Ajax and RSS – link.

C / C++ / Java family

The main features in Java 6 that should make it more appealing to desktop users – link.

Sun, Ruby, and Java: An interesting turn of events – link.

Scripting and high-level languages

Perl 6? Yeah, right – link.

Python 2.4.4 bugfix release, the final planned for 2.4 series, is available – link.

Python version 2.5 released, probably the most significant release since 2.2 – link. Discussion here. What is new in Python 2.5 – link 1, link 2.

Introducing Web Server Gateway Interface utilities in Python 2.5, Python’s secret Web weapon – part 1, part 2. Getting started with WSGI – link.

Various Python notes – link.

Creating a simple application, a to-do list, with Django, a Python-based a rapid web development framework – link.

A complete guide to learning Ruby – link.

Author of The Ruby Way interviewed – link.

RadRails is an eclipse-based IDE for Ruby on Rails – link.

The compromises and design decisions that went into making Ruby on Rails so productive within its niche, and Rails-inspired ideas that should get more attention within the Java community – link. Visualizing Ruby’s Grammar – link.

Smalltalk for everyone else – link. More comments here

Introducing Twilight, an Open Source OO language – link.

Security & Privacy

Searching for insecurity – link.

A beginner’s guide to configuring OpenVPN – link.

Secure Windows to UNIX connectivity using SSH – link.

Scalable anonymity with I2P (Invisible Internet Project) – link.

Freenigma add encryption to third-party webmail services via a Firefox plugin – link.

Secure your Wi-Fi traffic using FOSS utilities – link.

Penetration testing is a process for testing the security of networks by imitating an attacker. Conducting a successful penetration test involves a wide variety of software, including some of the following open source tools – link. The Metasploit Project is one of the most popular penetration testing suites available – link.

Top 5 tips to NOT get hacked online – link.

Managing a honeypot – link.

New alliance communicates the benefits of digital watermarking – link.

The OpenID project is an effort to produce a decentralized, open, user-centric identity management framework – link.

Security software problems may force the next wave of anti-trust litigation against Microsoft – link.

Secure by design: how Guardian Digital secures EnGarde Secure Linux – link.

Holes, patches, defenses

Bastille Linux is an excellent utility to help you probe, assess, and harden your Linux system – link.

Symantec says “There is no safe browser” – link. Symantec lashes out at Firefox – link 1, link 2.

AJAX and security – link.

Virus writers experiment with slow spreading viruses that slip under the radar of the security outfits – link.

MS Word passwords easy to crack – link.

Syndicated Malware via RSS and Atom feeds – link.

Miscellaneous

Geekcorps is a Peace Corps for the rest of us – link.

Goodwill Industries is good with open source portal Liferay – link.

Lawrence Lessig on “read/write culture” – link.

Quality management in free content – link.

Who killed TiVoToGo? The plot includes Hollywood, the FCC, and DRM. It is an ominous tale for fans looking forward to the widespread adoption of HDTV – link.

Lime Wire is fighting a RIAA shut down with a counter-suit of its own, using an anti-trust argument – link.

Much ado over licenses – link. Why Torvalds is sitting out the GPLv3 process – link.

What does it mean to join the Software Freedom Conservancy? – link.

Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row – link.

Business

Michael Robertson on Linux, Mp3tune, Zune – link.

On the marketing of free software – link.

A look at the business of blogging – link.

Robert Scales leads Raincity Studios with passion and extreme openness – link.

Novell receives delisting notice from NASDAQ – link. Remembering Ray Noorda – link.

SGI to emerge from bankruptcy, expects to reach profitability in FY 2007 – link.

Young internet producers, bankrolled, are seeking Act II – link.

Open source “gaining enormous momentum”, IDC reports – link. As venture dollars flow to OSS companies, CEOs urged to be picky – link.

Prior art will not solve the software patent problem, says Richard Stallman – link.

Linux spreads its wings in India – link.

GPL passes acid test in German court – link.

Oracle is not a Linux Company – link.

Never trust a computer company with your telephony, says telco – link.

The Internet

ICANN will become an autonomous body, free from any form of government control, on October 1, 2008, if plans drawn up between it and the U.S. government go according to plan – link.

Web 2.0 is for complete twonks – link.

OpenDomain.org donates use of Web addresses to encourage online collaboration – link.

PrefPass is looking to do for the onerous Web site registration process what Amazon has done for shopping. One click and you get the goods – link.