W.I.L. Tech-News Highlights for May/June 2007

Operating Systems

Windows Home Server vs. Linux or BSD – link.

VMware Workstation 6 virtually trounces the competition – link.

Why Microsoft and Linux companies are now doing business – link.

Counting OS vulnerabilities – link.

Linux

Linux Foundation charts Linux’s future – link. The Linux Foundation collaboration summit was nearly unique in the variety of people who attended – link.

Help for Linux newcomers

Migrating to Ubuntu from Windows – link, discussion. How you can turn Ubuntu Studio 7.04 into a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop – link ... Or do it with Debian 4.0 Etch – link.

Results of migrating a primary desktop from SUSE to Debian tested – link.

Rethinking the Linux distribution – link. What is a Linux distribution? – link.

Business vs Community: Xandros and PCLinuxOS compared – link.

Debian-Sid-based Sidux compared with Ubuntu-based Linux Mint – link.

Voyage Linux developers figured out how to shrink Debian Sarge to less than 64MB while retaining the apt-get package manager – link.

Creating a customized distribution using ROCK Linux or Linux From Scratch – link.

WindowMaker lightweight window manager project still attracting ardorous fans – link.

Red Hat releases free replacements for Windows core fonts Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman. Some work to make them completely compatible remains to be done – link.

Linux printing steps toward simplicity – link.

Novell, Capgemini, and the rise of corporate Linux – link.

KDE 4.0-alpha1 Released – link. KDE 3.5.7 enhances PIM apps, fixes bugs – link 1, link 2. KDE’s Plasma project, to renovate the KDE codebase for the upcoming KDE 4 release, is heating up – link.

Intel and PowerTOP extend Linux laptop battery life – link.

Simple shell script restores your system settings after OS reinstall – link.

Controlling your Linux system processes – link.

RPM “relaunched” at rpm5.org – link.

Getting started with GRUB – link.

To make backup copies of ephemeral content without printing it out, turn your Linux box into a PDF generation device for your entire network – link.

A tale of thunderstorms, lightning strikes, fried hardware, and SystemRescueCd – link.

BSDs, other Unixes

PC-BSD 1.3 does the job on old notebook that newer Linux distributions failed on – link.

In a “24-hour test drive” of PC-BSD 1.3, KDE seemed to load around three times faster than on a Kubuntu installation on another other drive. In fact, the whole system felt very snappy – link.

Taking OpenSolaris for a spin – link.

BeleniX, a “live CD” OpenSolaris, version 0.6 arrives. Improvements include a bundled Nvidia 3D accelerated driver and desktop effects. – link.

OpenBSD 4.1 is released. Several developers are interviewed – link.

Other OSes

DOSEMU reaches version 1.4.0, and comes packaged with FreeDOS – link.

Windows Vista reviewed – link.

The Yoggie Pico may well be the first hardware firewall that is truly practical for mobile workers running Windows-based computers – review.

Haiku in OS X, Opera 3.62 Runs on Haiku – link.

Applications

The LWN.net Grumpy Editor’s next project involves looking through a series of free software business accounting packages – link.

Intuit offers Linux users QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions – link 1, link 2.

Linux users’ choices for personal finance application include GnuCash, KMyMoney, Kapital, and others, as well as Quicken under WINE. A good alternative that runs on multiple operating systems and manages finances with ease is Java program Moneydance – review.

Databases

15 best free SQL Injection scanners – link.

Backing up MySQL (and other RDBMS) data – link.

PostgreSQL 8.3 release date set back by lack of testers – link.

SQLite 3.4.0 fixes two separate bugs either of which can lead to database corruption – link.

8 reasons not to use MySQL (and 5 to adopt it) – link.

MySQL architect Brian Aker interviewed – link.

Silva content management system releases version 2.0. Targets Zope 2.10+ and takes advantage of much of the new technology – link.

Internet applications

Mozilla CEO speaks out on future of Firefox – link.

FireFTP turns Firefox into a full-fledged FTP tool, so you can transfer files back and forth without leaving the browser – link.

Test driving Firefox 3 (alpha 5), which at the halfway point has so far focused more on the underlying code. Overall, FF3 looks like an exciting release with a wide variety of new features – link.

Firefox RIP extension lets you remove elements from Web pages – link.

Firefox Greasemonkey lets you enhance your browsing experience by rewriting HTML pages and JavaScript on the client side. Stylish gives you that same level of control over CSS – link.

FoxTorrent is a fully functional cross-platform Firefox BitTorrent that makes up for in simplicity what it lacks in features – review.

Firefox extension enables you to more easily juggle two or more sites in one browser window – link 1, link 2.

Enhancing eBay with Firefox extensions – link.

Flock “social browser”, an interesting project based on Firefox’s code, releases version 0.9 – review.

Kazehakase brings innovation to the browser – link.

gFTP is far more than just another FTP client – link.

Pidgin (formerly Gaim) hits 2.0. Voice support for instant messaging networks that support that feature is still missing – link.

Share files with friends while chatting using (closed source, Java-based, and advertisement-driven) Qnext – link.

Tiny Tiny RSS is an excellent little Web-based RSS aggregator – link.

Feed your content cravings with Liferea, a Linux-based aggregator for online news feeds – link.

Quick custom text ad placement in WordPress blog categories – link. Open Web Analytics plugin for WordPress is easy to use, and provides a wealth of information about your site traffic – link.

Using IRC client Irssi to communicate within projects – link.

A simple shell script for tracking Web sites – link.

4 open source groupware alternatives to Microsoft Exchange Server – link.

Office applications

XMLmind XML Editor is a great general-purpose XML editor, but has surprisingly powerful support for working with DocBook materials in an author-friendly way. Framemaker mourners can at last get some relief – link.

OpenOffice.org 2.2 touts all-around improvements – link. OO.o 2.2.1 fixes bugs, enhances security – link.

Desktop publishing with OO.o – link.

Must-have OO.o extensions – link.

Turning OO.o into a document conversion tool – link.

Creating self-running OO.o Impress presentations with IndeView – link.

LanguageTool adds grammar-checking capabilities to OpenOffice.org. – link.

Creating template and AutoText extensions in OO.o – link.

A detailed comparison of the OpenDocument and Microsoft OOXML document formats – link.

Unoconv converts between any document format that OpenOffice understands, including .pdf – link.

KeyJnote is a cross-platform slide presentation application, written in Python, that aims to add style to presentations – link.

How to create poster presentations with Scribus – link. Scribus 1.3.4 announced – link 1, link 2.

LyX version 1.5.0 RC 1 released – link.

PDF support on Linux is finally starting to equal what is available on other OSes – link.

Version 2.8.5 of SQL-Ledger, a web-based accounting system, is out – link.

TreeLine is a hybrid application that combines the features of a traditional outliner with a free-form database. As such, it offers a unique way to organize heterogeneous data, be it contact information, bookmarks, text snippets, bibliography, task lists, or something else – review.

Visuwords is a Flash-based Web application that acts as a graphical client for WordNet. It displays synonyms of the currently viewed word, and a variety of other lexical relations. Its colorful interface and ability to expand branches make Visuwords a great application for language professionals and anyone remotely interested in language, and for those who write for a living – link.

Mozilla Lightning and Sunbird 0.5 released. Include 38 new calendars, a viable print function, enhanced support for Outlook displays and numerous other upgrades – link.

Desktop-oriented applications

Google Desktop for Linux is a nice offering, but it slows a system down noticeably – link.

Art meets open source at Libre Graphics Meeting – link.

Create high-quality Web graphs in minutes with Plotr – link.

Anime Studio Pro gambles on putting out Linux version. Program is an editor for anime, Flash animations, webtoons, and other forms of 2-D graphics – review.

Art of Illusion is a mature, GPLed 3-D modeler with robust editing, animation, and rendering features, and it is a lot easier to use than Blender – link.

In Praise of Pic, a command-line based 2D graphics tool that can prove very useful – link.

Creating DVDs on a Linux machine can be made much easier by using “Q” DVD-Author – link.

Major Mono hackathon produces Moonlight, a free software implementation of Silverlight, which has been called Microsoft’s answer to Flash – link.

Rumors of flash viewer Gnash functionality are exaggerated – link.

A brief practical introduction to Ardour 2.0, an open source, professional-class, multritrack audio recording and editing application – link.

Jokosher, a multi-track audio studio that aims to make audio editing easy, releases version 0.9 – link.

Elisa is a free software media center application that can play your DVDs, video files, music, and pictures, that is designed for extensibility – review.

Programming

Platform promises “write-once, run anywhere” (including Windows, Mac) Linux apps – link.

Eclipse Foundation releases humongous open development platform – link.

SourceForge the “Hotel California” of open source projects? – link.

New GCC 4.2.0 a boon to developers, a bore to distros – link. Discussion here.

Bugzilla, a server-based application designed to track and manage software development bug reports, moves up to version 3.0 – link.

Introduction to UML – link. Comments.

Mono developers to bring Microsoft’s Silverlight to Linux – link.

With Cream, gVim becomes an easy-to-use editor ... so easy you might not believe that you are using vi – review.

Five scripts that make life easier with Vim – link.

Emacs 22 finally released – link.

Graphical user interface, Web

PyQt, the Python language bindings for Qt, version 4.2 is out – link.

What is coming in GTK+ 2.12 – link.

Adding Ajax (to an existing web application without redoing the whole thing) is a new book from O’Reilly – link.

Five AJAX frameworks reviewed – link.

TinyMCE (Tiny Moxiecode Editor) is a JavaScript program that lets users enter formatted text in HTML forms without having to know HTML tags – link.

Web 2.0 distracts from good design – link.

C/C++/Java family

Sun is trying to reinvigorate Java as a Web browser enhancement. Interview link with James Gosling here. Interview with Robert Brewin here.

CACAO is an open-source Java Virtual Machine that runs on a wide variety of processors on several Unix platforms, including Linux – link.

Scripting and high-level languages

Boo is an OOP language that makes use of the .Net/Mono Common Language Infrastructure, which is designed to extend and interact with C#. It is appealing to developers due to its simple syntax and well -implemented OOP functionality – link.

An introduction to purely functional language Haskell – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Pixy is a Java program that performs automatic scans of PHP source code, aimed at the detection of XSS and SQL injection vulnerabilities – link.

Migrating Web-based PHP applications to Ajax – link.

Python 3000 status update indicates release schedule has slipped a bit – link.

Python Papers Volume 2 Issue 2 now available – link.

Carl Sassenrath of REBOL Technologies interviewed – link.

Ruby language and the Ruby on Rails web platform online tutorials – link.

Real world Ruby on Rails: Caching in Rails – link.

A gentle introduction to the heart of Rails – part 1, part 2.

What is new with Ruby – link.

XQuery, the server language – link.

Security & Privacy

Transfer files securely with SFTP – link.

Secure Back Door (SBD) can open an encrypted connection to your system without SSH always running – link.

Four ways to hide information inside image and sound objects – link.

Why DRM will not ever work – link.

When routers go bad – link.

Wireless regulatory compliance – link.

Talking security with Red Hat’s Mark Cox – link.

Version 3.0 of the Metasploit Framework (MSF), the popular penetration testing project, is out – link.

Firefox security status – link.

Google, Yahoo, Facebook extensions put millions of Firefox users at risk – link.

Encrypt and sign Gmail messages with FireGPG – link.

Miscellaneous

After several years of decline, the demand for certification and training in Linux and other free software areas is stronger than ever – link.

Clay Claiborne was an early Linux advocate, but lately he has dropped out of Linux activism and is spending most of his time on social (mostly ant-war) activism – link.

Eben Moglen on how to change the world (video) – link.

Top 7 things system administrators forget to do – link.

Bringing free software down to earth – link.

A think tank’s view of free software – link.

A free software project is made by its community, not by a marketing plan. It is hard to imagine wanting that to change – link.

Business

A day at the Open Source Business Conference – link. Open source now legitimate, says Red Hat CEO – link.

Defending “open source” – link. Time to start enforcing “open source” – link. Welcome to Open Source 2.0 – link. Bad reasons not to buy Open-Source software – link.

Source code auditing keeps organizations on the right side of licensing – link.

A tale of two dead companies – link.

Progeny’s closure highlights problems of small FOSS companies – link.

The Be Very Afraid Tour and a word about that patent study – link.

The Internet

The man who owns the Internet. How the master of Web domains built a $300 million empire – link.

Fans of MySpace and Facebook are divided by much more than which music they like – link.

Fault-tolerant Web hosting on a shoestring. By taking advantage of the underlying fault-tolerance of the Internet, you can get a surprising level of reliability for little cost – link.