W.I.L. Tech-News Highlights for March/April 2007

Operating Systems

Ubunto Linux takes on XP in 6-week OS showdown – link.

Win4Lin Pro Desktop 4.0 lags behind free alternatives – link.

Linux

IceWM is a desktop for Windows emigrants – review.

BackTrack 2.0 version helps organize security tools into a live CD package that will be helpful to anyone faced with security oriented tasks. There are other distributions with a similar focus, but it will be hard to find one as up-to-date and as comprehensive – link.

4 Linux desktops tackle the enterprise – link.

KDE 4 gets more hot new stuff – link.

A first look at Dolphin, the KDE 4 file manager – link. Dolphin compared with Konqueror – link.

GNOME 2.18 shows (only) incremental improvement – link.

Thunar is a file manager that is an integral part of XFCE desktop environment. It is similar to Nautilus, but uses much less resources – link.

Bootable system rescue Linux CD gets updated – link.

Linux kernel 2.6.21 released – link.

Recoll is a search engine for the Linux desktop – link.

Linux goes to Wall Street, puts on a show – link 1, link 2.

Building a high-performance cluster with Gentoo – link.

Samba 3 preview release makes Linux machines behave a bit more like Windows – link.

Chess engines for Linux are comparable in strength to commercial chess engines – link.

Linux and flash – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

A peek at the DragonFly BSD virtual kernel – part 1, part 2.

Interview with Sun’s Chris Melissinos – link.

Windows and DOS

CCleaner a good tool for de-crapping Windows XP – link.

How to modify Windows Registry with VBScript – link.

Vista sales, myth and reality – link.

The hidden taxes added to MS Windows – link.

Mac, Other OS’s

Apple sued over vague user interface patent – link.

Current owner of BeOS code claims Zeta is illegal – link.

Applications

A dozen tips for testing free software – link.

Meld is a visual compare and merge tool – link.

Alfresco is an enterprise CMS that, according to some users, is beating legacy content management systems in speed, quality and ease of use – link.

Version 1.6 of the Silva CMS brings a range of improvements and several key new features – link.

Databases

Building a Data Warehouse with MySQL and Perl, using a highly UNrelational database model – link.

Create a Web-based interface for MySQL databases in a flash with phpMyEdit – link.

Firebird sub-release 2.0.1 adds no new features (those are coming in 2.1) but provides a large number of bug-fixes and a few improvements. It is highly recommended that v.2.0 installations be upgraded – link.

SQLite 3.3.14 focuses on performance improvements – link.

Internet applications

A beginner’s guide to IRC – link.

Why the Semantic Web will fail – link.

Opera has your favorite sites on speed dial with version 9.2 – link.

The Mozilla Amazon Browser is a browser-based application that relies on Mozilla’s XML User Interface Language (XUL) technology to implement its GUI. But both need some time to work on the problems still present – link.

Fullerscreen is a Firefox extension that gives Web pages the full run of your monitor – link.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 brings tags to the email world – link 1, link 2, link 3.

Boost your blogging with Foxfire plugin ScribeFire – link.

Drupal vs. WordPress: Which is better for blogging? – link.

OpenID-enable your WordPress blog – link.

ccHost, a Web-based media sharing system, 4.0 is out – link.

Use a wiki to integrate your information systems – link.

Pawfaliki is a perfect tool for users who want to set up a personal wiki with minimum fuss, or small workgroups looking for a quick and easy way to share knowledge and collaborate – link.

lighttpd, a plucky young featherweight Web server, is already powering some of the best-known and highly frequented sites on the Internet – link.

Office applications

Pagestream delivers easy, powerful DTP for Linux and Windows. The equivalent functionality in QuarkXpress or InDesign costs more than 10 times as much, and neither supports Linux – link.

PDFedit has a strong claim to being the first truly practical tool for editing PDF files on the Linux desktop, and even if it compares poorly to Acrobat 8 it brings a core of functionality that has been missing for too long – link.

OpenOffice.org 2.2 is out. Quality of text display is improved in all parts, and PDF export function has been enhanced – link.

Options for converting OO.o Writer documents into tidy HTML pages or wiki-formatted text files – link.

Introduction to OO.o Calc functions – link.

Two OpenXML translators compared – link.

Two spiffy dictionary tools for Linux desktop users – link.

Writing and publishing with Emacs Muse – link.

Simple Invoices, a Web-based invoicing system, is a winner for folks with a bit of tech savvy – link.

TXbook, a GPL accounting program for small businesses, launched. It would need to be adapted to be used outside Australia – link.

Getting Things Done (GTD) method of time management implemented in Java-based ThinkingRock – link.

Watch your work habits with Rachota 2.1 – link.

Desktop-oriented applications

Inkscape 0.45 is the best yet – review.

Dia 0.96 introduces import and export of Visio VDX files, improves the font rendering, and has numerous other fixes and improvements – link.

Creating hackergotchis using the GIMP – link.

The LWN.net Grumpy Editor’s guide to high dynamic range photography with Linux. HDR is a set of techniques for overcoming the limitations of contemporary hardware and thus generating images which better represent a scene as viewed by the human eye ... or which appear to come from a work of fantasy art – link.

Working with raw images on Linux – link.

The free software community has two independent projects working toward the implementation of a free Flash player, Gnash and swfdec – link.

Mirage is a relatively new image viewing application which has been designed with speed in mind – link.

Gnuplot, a data graphing utility, 4.2 is out – link.

Video editing on Linux – link. Open source video editing still has a long way to go – link.

Become a digital video editing guru using Linux tools – link.

Adobe’s horrible decision to use proprietary video compression codec for Flash 8 – link.

Checking out the new Open Font Library, an an offshoot of the Open Clip Art Library – link.

XMP, an XML-based metadata standard for digital images, is making inroads in open source imaging software – link.

VLC is a cross-platform media player with a simple interface, but it has some advanced features – link.

Kino video editor finally hits 1.0, but no work in the offing for a year now – link. How to create video titles and graphics with Kino – link. Kino review.

Rawstudio is a fast and light RAW photo converter – link.

Download podcasts and sync music automatically with podget – link.

Sonic Visualiser is an application for viewing audio files, whose target audience is people in the field of music production – link.

Programming

O’Reilly School of Technology opens its virtual doors – link.

Jeremy Allison’s advice to young programmers – link.

Getting Things Done using Tracks project tracker – link.

John Backus, the creator of the Fortran programming language, dies – link.

Using Cscope and SilentBob to analyze source code – link.

A Vim primer for those who have not used it much and want to wade in gradually – link.

Graphical user interface, Web

Adding GUI goodness to OOoBasic – link.

Why a Web browser is sometimes a better interface than a GUI application and why experienced Web developers find themselves struggling to learn a GUI toolkit – link.

People don’t hate to make desktop apps, do they? Since web apps were originally built on desktop applications themselves, have the tables flipped? – link.

Mono project-lead Miguel de Icaza Pleads For Mono/.Net cooperation – link.

Bringing Web-based applications offline – link.

Webtop software development combines the desktop and the Internet – link.

New tools help create cellphone-friendly Web sites – link.

Firebug is an add-on to Firefox that lets you edit and debug everything from simple CSS and JavaScript templates to complex AJAX applications – link.

Pondering beautiful XML design – link.

Q&A with James Gosling, father of Java – link.

Scripting and high-level languages

The rise of functional languages – link.

Five ways to improve your Perl programming – link.

PHP internal site search engine showdown – link.

PyCon 2007 wrapped up – link 1, link 2.

DrPython, a cross-platform Python IDE, version 165 announced – link.

Security & Privacy

The intentional backdooring of WordPress is an example of the incentive for crackers to insert malware into free software distributions. If the processes or servers are vulnerable to attack, the project may find its way into the headlines for the wrong reasons – link.

GnuPG signature spoofing vulnerability – link.

How to create a command-line password vault – link.

How to hide an entire filesystem – link.

OpenID is an open decentralized digital identity system that has been gaining traction in recent months – link.

What to do about DNS? – link.

The Metasploit Framework is a development platform for creating security tools and exploits – link. Metasploit 3.0 provides many new features – link.

BackTrack is a live CD Linux distribution that focuses on penetration testing – link.

Put your OpenSSH server in SSHjail – link. Advanced SSH security tips and tricks – link. Protect SSH from brute force attacks with pam_abl – link. sshguard is another tool to help protect against such attacks – link.

Zabbix provides state-of-the-art network monitoring – link.

Using squidGuard for Web content filtering – link.

Intrusion detection for the browser – link. Firekeeper is an intrusion detection and prevention system for Firefox – link.

Spam, advertising

Installing and configuring spamd – link.

Reducing spam with OpenBSD and spamd – link.

Miscellaneous

Back to baseball with Retrosheet and OSS – link.

How not to handle a licensing violation – link.

Interview with Richard Stallman on GPLv3 and more – link.

Two examples of abandoned hardware – link.

Hackers v Hollywood, round 2 – link.

Victims fight back against DMCA abuse – link.

Microsoft vs. Adobe competition heating up – link.

Business

Craigslist’s Buckmaster on open source and being the CEO – link.

SkinnyCorp.com has built a group of community-based sites on a traditional LAMP stack. SkinnyCorp software engineer Harper Reed credits the open source infrastructure with keeping the business agile – link.

Web 2.0 Podcast: What the desirable demographic (teens) wants – link.

Patent fights are a legacy of MP3’s tangled origins – link.

Internet Radio on death row – link.

Dell, Lenovo sell Windows-free laptops for Linux customers – link.

Novell’s revenue sags, but Linux business soars – link.

Microsoft’s “Men in Black” kill Florida open standards legislation – link.

The Internet

ICANN hands over control of .com registry to Verisign forever – link. Dotcom contract “undermines” ICANN’s integrity – link. Registrars urge rejection of VeriSign’s .com deal – link. Verisign wastes no time jacking up domain prices, after sweetheart deal with ICANN – link.

A relational view of the Semantic Web – link.