W.I.L. Tech-News Highlights for January/February 2007

Operating Systems

A Vista vs. Linux matchup – Part 1: Leveling the Playing Field, Part 2: Dual-booting Vista and Linux, Part 3: Hardware Wars, Software Wars / Bundled Apps.

Special report on Virtualization, the ability to run multiple virtual resources and OSes in a single physical environment, on Linux – link.

Innotek open-sources its VirtualBox virtualization software, which can run on 32-bit Windows and Linux hosts and supports several guest OSes – link. Talking virtualization with rPath – link.

Desktop Virtualization with free-as-in-beer VMware Player and very cheap Workstation – link.

Sun’s Project Looking Glass is a 3-D desktop environment for Linux, Windows, and Solaris – link.

Linux

LPIC-1 Linux certification training available online. The cost of the training is $295, a fraction of the cost of most training programs – link.

Looking forward to 2007 in the Linux world – link. Predictions for 2007 (and how I did on 2006) – link.

Linux Standard Base plans cross-format package API, which could be included in the most widely used distributions by early 2008 – link.

Help for Linux newcomers

Note to new Linux users: No antivirus needed – link.

Running Windows applications with CrossOver Linux 6.0 – link. CodeWeavers CEO interviewed – link.

Create shortcuts to run any program you would like using XBindKeys – link.

Hardware that just works – link.

Pardus 2007 has its own multilingual installer, custom dependency-resolving package manager, and an INIT system that slashes boot times by several seconds. Thanks to its custom tools, it is one of the easiest Linux distribution to run and manage. And with its modest hardware requirements and streamlined boot scripts, Pardus could easily turn an old machine into a modern Linux desktop – link.

The advantages of distribution forks – link.

What is the best Linux for resellers? – link.

Linux software installation and management (aka packaging) tools special report – link.
Klik lets you download and run software without installing it – link.
GoboLinux’s recipe for delicious package management – link, comments.
RPM development on the road to revival – link.
A look at Slackware’s package utilities – link.
Make your own packages for Debian-based systems – link.
Linux software packaging and installation utility wrapup – link.

Run new packages on older distros with backports – link.

Vyatta Community Edition 2, a firewall-router distribution, includes excellent documentation, and supports numerous enterprise features – link.

New stable version of EnGarde Secure Linux is out – link.

Xfce 4.4 is the best lightweight desktop environment – link.

ROX Desktop provides light, quirky alternative to GNOME and KDE – link.

New KDE 4 preview shows progress – link. KDE 4’s Sonnet will turbocharge language processing – link.

KXDocker is a KDE variation of Mac OS X’s Dock (which is also usable with GNOME and other desktop environments) – link.

Scribes is a text editor for GNOME that focuses on usability. After 30 minutes of usage, you will either love it or hate it – link.

A preview of some GNOME panel applications – link.

Linux troubleshooting tools 101 – link.

linux.conf.au 2007 highlights – link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4.

China’s Linux industry booms, despite problems – link.

Expert shares secrets to saving $thousands with K12 Linux Terminal Server Project – link.

LinuxBIOS ready to go mainstream – link.

Handling RAR and 7-Zip archives in Linux – link.

A guide to running OpenVZ, an OS-level virtualization solution that allows you to partition servers into multiple virtual private servers – link.

How to run Linux inside Linux with User Mode Linux – link.

Linux-VServer offers a simple way to run several virtual servers on one piece of physical hardware that is capable of excellent performance. – link.

How to configure a scanner’s buttons on Linux – link.

HDTV under Linux is not only possible, it is downright fantastic when using pcHDTV HD-5500 – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

FreesBIE 2.0 is a live CD is based on FreeBSD 6.2. It is an ideal platform to experience BSD and learn how things are done in BSD land – link.

PC-BSD 1.3 is a good OS for die-hard BSD users who want a simplified desktop, but not so much for users who are seeking ease of use and hardware compatibility – review.

Comparing Linux and Minix – link.

Windows and DOS

Microsoft Vista is not an option – link.

How to get a Windows tax refund – link.

Windows Vista performance guide – link.

A cost analysis of Vista content protection – link.

Applications

Avoiding the tar pit, a la Vista, that besets large-scale software projects – link.

How much memory are applications really using? – link.

OpenMFG provides enterprise resource planning software to small and mid-sized manufacturing companies – link.

My sysadmin toolbox – link.

FLAC, the Free Lossless Audio Codec, 1.1.4 features increased compression and dramatic speedups for both encoding and decoding – link.

Drake CMS is a light-weight dynamic web authoring and CMS, featuring are the support of any database system (plus an embedded flatfile database), security, speed, easy management and customization. Version 0.3.2 Beta is out – link.

Segue is an open source collaborative CMS designed for e-learning that combines the ease of use of course management systems with the flexibility of weblogs for creating various types of sites including course, news, and journal. Version 1.7.0 released – link.

Databases

Is the one-size-fits-all database dead? – link.

Brian Aker, database strategist – link.

Educators can manage course content with Moodle CMS – link.

A PostgreSQL security flaw. A deeper look reveals some serious implications – link.

Internet applications

eyeOS is a Web Desktop Environment, or Web Operating System (Web OS), or Web Office. The primary concept is that it is a desktop system that is completely accessed from a browser – link.

Opera contests draws attention to widget development – link.

The LWN.net Grumpy Editor’s Guide to graphical IRC clients – link.

Text email clients revisited – link.

SeaMonkey 1.1, powered by the same engine as Firefox 2 and Thunderbird 2, is out – link.

infoRSS is an unobtrusive RSS feed manager for Thunderbird and Firefox – review.

Geeklog provides a Web portal with all the trimmings, and all of it working right “out of the box” – link.

EditThisPagePHP offers collaboration without the wiki – link.

Run your own Webradio station with Icecast2 And Ices2 – link.

A new way to visualize for Web server logs – link.

Office applications

OpenOffice.org 2 Guide is a 520-page tome that will be useful both for OOo newbies and power users who are interested in learning arcane features of the office suite – book review.

Connect OpenOffice.org to MySQL – link.

Secrets of line spacing in OO.o Writer – link.

Customizing general OO.o settings – link.

OO.o Basic macro enables one to work directly with documents on an FTP server – link.

Small improvements make WordPress 2.1 worth the upgrade – link.

The LWN.net Grumpy Editor’s guide to note-taking applications – link.

Desktop-oriented applications

Someone upset with “Nero” CD and DVD-burning application decided to release unofficial “Nero Lite” and “Nero Micro”, which come in at around 20% and 10% of the original suite’s size. (You still need your legal serial number) – link.

Xara LX forked to replace rendering engine – link.

LightZone for Linux delivers commercial quality photo conversion for free – link.

ImageMagick, a suite of command-line graphics tools for Linux and Windows, is compared with GraphicsMagick, which covers much of the same functionality – link.

Track your book, audio, video, etc. collections with GCstar – review.

Manage your media library with Data Crow – link.

Freevo is a Linux application that turns a PC with a TV capture card and/or TV-out into a standalone multimedia jukebox/VCR/PVR/HTPC. Version 1.7.0 is out – link.

Exaile is a GNOME-based media player for Linux, similar to KDE-based Amarok – link.

Multimedia freedom with Linux – link.

Linux audio players tested and graded – link.

Cast off your iTunes chains and manage your music entirely with Linux using Amarok – link.

Bring in podcasts with CLI-based BashPodder – link.

Streamtuner is a GUI browser for the thousands of Internet radio streams available today, like a Linux tuner for Internet radio – link.

News from the ever-expanding world of Linux sound and music software – link.

Track your ancestors with GRAMPS – link.

Linux Guitar Project is not a solo act – link.

Use MP3Gain to adjust your MP3s to have the the same volume – link.

Nexuiz is one of the most promising free first-person shooters. It rejects the ongoing trend for more realistic tactical shooters, emphasis has been placed on fast action game play – link.

Programming

Why one programmer stopped coding and what it would take to get him to start again: An enhancement of Python to make programming as fun as it was in the BASIC-in-ROM minicomputer days – link.

Building a programmer’s Rosetta Stone – link.

Why software is hard – link.

Krugle offers a code search engine for open source, with open source – link.

Using tabs in Vim – link.

Graphical user interface, Web

New Mono release lets VB developers compile under Linux – link.

Drupal, the popular GPLed Web development framework, has had a major version release. Drupal 5 incorporates more than 1,000 patches, and features overhauls and updates in system performance, usability, user interface, and theming – link.

Komodo IDE 4.0 allows developers to create entire web applications - server, browser, and the HTTP conversation that connects them - within a single unified workspace. Support for dynamic languages such as Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Tcl, is extended to browser-side languages including JavaScript, CSS, HTML and XML – link.

Debugging CSS, AJAX and DOM with Firebug – link.

XUL-enhanced Web applications – link.

Jazz up your Web site in 10 minutes with GreyBox, a tiny (22KB) JavaScript-based tool – link.

CherryPy, a Python-based cross-platform object-oriented Web development framework, reaches the 3.0.0 milestone – link. CherryPy 3.0.1 announced. Mainly a bug-fix release, there are also some performance tweaks and other changes as well – link.

Introducing RDFa, a new XHTML-friendly standard syntax for RDF metadata that allows you to embed RDF metadata into the Web in a novel way – part 1, part 2.

C/C++/Java family

D Programming Language, version 1.0 is out – link.

Java’s greatest missed opportunity? – link.

Groovy is a language for the JVM that integrates seamlessly with the Java platform. It offers a Java-like syntax, with language features inspired by Smalltalk, Python or Ruby, and lets your reuse all your Java libraries. Version 1.0 is out – link.

Scripting and high-level languages

Modernizing the Common Language, COBOL – link.

PHP 6 will offer Unicode support – link.

Increase PHP programming productivity with Zend Studio – link.

Python 2.4 decorators make metaprogramming magic easy – link.

PyDEV is a plugin that enables developers to use Eclipse for Python and Jython development, making Eclipse a first-class Python IDE – link.

Version 1.0 of Lython, a Lisp dialect compiler which outputs Python byte-code, has been announced – link.

Ruby implementation shootout – link.

Rolling with Ruby on Rails revisited – part 1, part 2.

Ruby’s performance examined – link.

Ruby on Rails 1.2 has many new headline features and “absolutely staggering amount of polish” – link. Discussion here.

Making XML in a Ruby on Rails application – link.

Security & Privacy

Who owns your Web domain? – link.

The openLiberty internet identity management project – link.

Cisco PIX hardware firewall compared with two freeware software firewalls – link.

NuFW steers away from commonplace firewalls is by bringing the notion of user identity to the firewall’s security rules – link.

Damn Vulnerable Linux is a learning tool for security students – link.

Enhance security with file encryption tools – link. Filesystem encryption in mixed environments with TrueCrypt – link.

OpenDNS adds a few free services on top of the traditional DNS to block phishing Web sites and auto-correct common misspelled URLs, and can also deliver Web pages faster – link.

Psiphon allows users with unfiltered Internet access to provide a private, SSL-encrypted Web proxy for use by individuals in firewalled countries – link.

Hunting for Rootkits, a means of evading administrators, hiding the presence and the execution of certain programs – link.

Set up remote access in UNIX through OpenSSH – link.

Holes, patches, defenses

It is increasingly clear that Linux boxes (as well as MacOS X and other UNIX boxes) are participating in botnets, but in a bit of a twist, it is mostly servers that have been subverted – link.

The old bugs are the best bugs – link.

Miscellaneous

Building a relationship economy, as open source development methods and values provide by way of example – link.

Open source Campcaster empowers independent radio broadcasters, enabling independent and community-owned media to compete with better-funded government and corporate outlets in emerging democracies – link 1, link 2, review.

Free software communities are often described as being meritocracies. The truth tends to be a bit more complicated than that – link.

Meet Rosegarden’s D. Michael McIntyre, “typical” member of the free/open source community – link.

Libraries facilitate open access to information with open source software – link.

Brazil’s FOSS utopia image at risk – link.

Creative Commons helps authors terminate copyright transfers – link.

How an accident of hardware design at DEC helped bring the open source software movement into existence – link.

Business

Because Firefox is a mass-market, consumer-oriented product that can easily be replaced, Mozilla has to move faster and be more innovative and marketing-oriented than the typical open-source application – link.

Ticket broker In Ticketing is going head to head with Ticketmaster. It is able to offer lower fees for the same services because of open source software – link.

Fluendo media decoders sound bad to open source advocates, but sales of decoders for non-free formats are funding the development of free alternatives – link.

Wind River buys RTLinux. There are few indications that Wind River sees RTL as anything more than a product, so those hoping for a more community-oriented stance may well be disappointed – link.

Major systems vendors and Linux – link.

YoYoNation is an online retailer, and a community for all things yo-yo, with a mission to make New York the “center of the yo-yo universe.” It runs on open source software – link.

Second Life releases some code – link. Interview with Second Life’s Cory Ondrejka – link.

The state of the computer book market, according to Tim O’Reilly – link.

The Internet

The new 100 most useful Web sites – link. 50 coolest travel and real estate Websites 2006 – link. More useful and cool sites – link.

The need for voice connectivity on the web – link.