Learn about Linux
Download Linux
Get Linux helpSpecial Offers
NewsVac: News from around the Web
-
Product review - the EmperorLinux Wasp CF-19
41 minutes ago
"If you need a battle-ready rugged notebook that runs Linux, the EmperorLinux Wasp CF-19 may be for you .... " -
First glance: the Nokia N810 Linux internet tablet doesn't make sense
2 hours, 11 minutes ago
"I had an opportunity to play with the new Nokia N810 Internet Tablet for about five minutes last night, and came away confused..." -
Collaboration: best reason for government open source?
3 hours, 41 minutes ago
"Ask a software vendor why governments need open source, and the answer will likely be collaboration. But public agencies may be more interested in the bottom line .... " -
Fabricators descend on Maker Faire Austin
5 hours, 11 minutes ago
"AUSTIN, Texas--If you've never seen a machine that makes 3D models out of sugar, you should. But unless you're part of a relatively small group of people who went to the Maker Faire in California in May, or are one of a few other people who know the machine's creator, you probably have never even heard of the device. " -
Microsoft responsible for nearly half of IT jobs
6 hours, 41 minutes ago
A study sponsored by the software giant found global IT spending will top $1.24 trillion in 2007, thanks in large part to itself .... -
Ten years of pkgsrc
8 hours, 11 minutes ago
"10 Years ago - on October 3rd 1997 - the pkgsrc software management system was created by Alistair Crooks and Hubert Feyrer. pkgsrc, the NetBSD Packages Collection, was intended primarily as a packaging system for NetBSD. Derived from the FreeBSD Ports system, pkgsrc became a success story. Today, pkgsrc is a cross-platform framework, running on the BSDs, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, many Unix derivatives, and even on QNX and Windows. Ports- and pkgsrc-like software build frameworks are today standard on the BSDs and quite popular on some newer Linux distributions. In 2005 pkgsrc was adopted as the package management system for DragonFly BSD. Presently, pkgsrc provides more than 7300 stable packages. We continue the anniversary celebrations with a series of interviews: developers and users of pkgsrc and of related systems give insights into the history, the concepts, the problems and the future directions of packaging systems." -
13 reasons why Linux should be on your desktop
9 hours, 41 minutes ago
"A couple of years ago, the Linux desktop was a pimply adolescent with half-baked ideas. Today we see a handsome, well-dressed grown-up who handles a range of tasks with confidence and even performs fancy tricks. No longer need we make allowances for his dress sense or his strange habits ... " -
Is it easier to hire open source developers?
11 hours, 11 minutes ago
"Namely: what are the benefits of hiring open source developers, and what are the benefits of developing open source software if you're looking to get hired..." -
Learn the basics of the Perl/Tk module
1 day ago
Although Perl-based Web interfaces have limitations, Perl is one of the most commonly used Web development languages. UNIX users who have a programming background in shell scripting, Perl, or another language can breathe new life into Perl-based Web interfaces by using the Perl/Tk module. -
Firm picks Oracle 11g on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the long haul
1 day, 2 hours ago
When it came time for fleet tracking and management software provider Cadec Global LLC to rebuild its software as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, chief architect Heimir Sverrisson knew it had to be deployed on Linux, not Microsoft Windows or a proprietary Unix flavor like Sun Microsystems' Solaris or IBM's AIX. Cadec's old system, Mobius TTS, was a client/server application based on Microsoft Windows running SQL Server. From the outset, Windows was eliminated because of scalability concerns; it didn't scale well enough to be used as a mission-critical SaaS platform. "On system administration tasks and operations, it was cumbersome and hard to script, and as a platform, hidden registries were a nasty thing and you couldn't move components across machines very easily," Sverrisson said. -
Open source as competitive weapon proves to be bad investment
1 day, 3 hours ago
Oliver Alexy of Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) Business School has written an interesting paper titled "Putting a Value on Openness: The Effect of Product Source Code Releases on the Market Value of Firms." The research traces the impact of open source on company market valuations from January 1, 1999, to April 30, 2007. The research is hampered somewhat by a lack of private-company data, but it still offers up some useful conclusions. -
Tips to Be a Paid Open Source Developer
1 day, 3 hours ago
Want to be paid to be an open source developer? If you've ever been curious about how to develop open source into a paying business or if you have a great project idea, CIO.com has a series on "The Business of Open Source" that may provide some guidance. -
Debating the economics of Windows-to-Linux migration
1 day, 4 hours ago
My post last week on the difficult economics of Windows-to-Linux desktop migrations in big organizations (http://www.linux.com/feed/119684) like government agencies drew a fair amount of reader comments, all of it commendably polite and reasonable. It seems to me the most interesting point is that while Linux migration may not make much financial sense short term, in the long term – or very long term – the switch can yield cost savings by virtue of the fact that it breaks Microsoft's proprietary lock-in. In other words, you pay through the teeth to move to Linux now, but you get that investment back eventually because you no longer have to pay monopoly rent to Microsoft. This argument makes perfect sense, but economic theory and empirical observation of real-world software industry behavior both suggest that it might not work in practice. -
The Business of Open Source
1 day, 4 hours ago
The open-source community gained momentum and support during the nineties thanks to the mainstreaming of the Internet and the support of organizations such as the Open-Source Initiative. Along with the growth of open source have come new strategies to sustain the projects and their communities. In an economically driven society, many open-source projects are struggling to maintain their purely nonprofit existence. Numerous solutions have been presented, with some open-source projects evolving into products and others building businesses related to the open-source project to help provide people power and funding. This three-part series, "The Business of Open Source," explores the business of maintaining open-source projects and the businesses that grow out of them. -
How To Install A Complete LEMP (Linux - EngineX (Nginx HTTP SERVER) - Mysql - PHP) Server On Ubuntu/Debian
1 day, 5 hours ago
This HowTo will describe the setup of an efficient http server and mail server for small or medium configurations (as low as 96 mb). Why LEMP instead of LAMP? NGINX is a great replacement for Apache with very low memory footprint and great stability.
http://www.howtoforge.com/lemp_nginx_mysql_php_ubuntu_debian - More News
Where does Linux go from here?
Linux is now mainstream -- so mainstream, in fact, that two of the top three Linux distributions are commercially successful operations, and the third aims to be. Every day, more and more old-school IT firms shake off their initial doubts, get in line behind their customers, and try Linux and other free software projects. In the face of such success, will Linux remain true to its free software ideals and to the community which created it? Or will it morph into a corporate byproduct, driven by the bottom line, and complacent with all forms of predatory intellectual property (IP), including software patents and closed, proprietary standards which are standard fare in the IT industry.
GPLv3 adoption on track, experts say
How is the third version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) being received four months after its official release? Not well, if you believe the Evans Data survey released on September 25. However, those who concern themselves with licensing issues at the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and at Palamida, a company that advises customers on issues that surround free and open software (FOSS), paint a different picture. According to these FOSS experts, adoption of GPLv3 is going as expected, and, while reasons for caution exist, the new version is likely to replace GPLv2 some time in the next few years. As for the Evans Data survey, they suggest that the information released overgeneralizes a complex situation.
Sun Report Builder: Better reporting in OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org Base is undoubtedly a powerful database application, but when it comes to its built-in reporting engine, words like "underpowered" and "outdated" come to mind. Fortunately, you don't have to put up with this situation any longer: with the Sun Report Builder (SRB) extension, you can add nifty reporting features based on Pentaho reporting engine -- assuming you can figure out how to use it without any help.
Simple home networking with SSH
The Secure Shell (SSH) network protocol makes it easy to connect computers that are running Linux, share files, and remotely run applications. Along with an X server, it can make sharing a single computer simple on a home network.
Fedora - not that one - provides platform for interoperability
There's a wealth of information stored in online collaborative services like YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia, but are these Web 2.0 services built to facilitate sharing their content across their individual boundaries? A group of academicians at Cornell University argue that this new wave of applications should be constructed with interoperability in mind. The result of their research, funded by DARPA and NSF, is Fedora, the Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture. The project was recently awarded a $4.9M grant by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to expand the functionality of its software platform.
The patent infringement suit: A playbook
Last week's announcement of a patent infringement suit against Red Hat and Novell set in motion speculation about motives, theories, agendas, and behind-the-scenes players. If you've been feeling like you need a scorecard to keep up, then you're in luck.
Five tag management plugins for WordPress 2.3
If you want to experiment with tags on your WordPress site, there's never been a better time. The newest WordPress version, 2.3, offers native tagging support. Working with tags in WordPress 2.3 is not a totally intuitive process, and ubiquitous tag management plugin Ultimate Tag Warrior is not supported in 2.3, so coders have been busy writing new plugins to help you take advantage of every ounce of tag functionality in WordPress. Here are five tag management plugins for 2.3 you might want to try.
Meet the chumby
I've been pacing the chumby maternity ward for nearly a year, waiting for this unique wireless device to see the light of day. I recently took delivery of my own little bundle of chumby joy and, at first look, I think it will make a great addition to my growing gadget family.
Linspire 6: Two steps back
Former Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony was pretty gung-ho about the company's upcoming release back in June. He said it would "fill some key holes in our current offering." Unfortunately Linspire 6, released last week, lacks the refinements you'd expect in a distro you pay $50 to download. It drops some key distinguishing features, and in return gains only some Microsoft technology as spelled out in the Microsoft patent covenants Linspire agreed to. This release seems to be about deferring to Microsoft.
Increase page ranking with FOSS tools for SEO
Theoretically, search engines should find all the best Web sites and rank them at the top of their search results. Unfortunately, due to the gap between artificial and human intelligence, this doesn't always happen. Users have the ability to alter the rankings by doing search engine optimization (SEO) -- a two-edged sword that can either be beneficial or harmful, depending on whose hands it's in. You can improve your site's search-engine rankings by using free or open source software (FOSS) tools for SEO.
Community is top priority in monetizing open source Openads
Openads, formerly known as phpAdsNew, is one of the more successful open source development projects. Its online advertising software is used by many thousands of domain owners who want to make a profit on their Web content by selling advertisements. Scott Switzer, the project leader, recently went commercial with the project, securing $5 million in venture capital and a new CEO straight from Skype. The key to the company's success? "I have really seen the value in what a community can give to a software project," he says.
O3Spaces 2.2: A step closer to open source
O3Spaces is a proprietary integrated collaboration and document management application for workgroups and businesses. Almost a year after its launch, the company behind the software has released version 2.2 beta. While the new version doesn't offer any earth-shattering new features, O3Spaces 2.2 sports a wealth of improvements aimed at solidifying its position as a viable alternative to Microsoft SharePoint.
Puppy Linux grows bigger teeth
For several years Puppy Linux has been breathing life into old and dated hardware, but instead of being just another minimalistic distribution, Puppy boasts smart features that save resources without cutting down the number of applications. The latest major Puppy release, Puppy 3.00, continues this trend by making the less than 100MB distro binary-compatible with Slackware 12 and providing other enhancements.
Retain and recall long paths with rr utility
rr -- short for retain and recall -- is a small utility that's both simple and useful. When you need to work on a config file buried deep in the bowels of your system and don't want to type its full path name to do so, rr is just the thing.
Ontario LinuxFest makes an auspicious debut
The first-ever Ontario LinuxFest, unapologetically modeled on Ohio's conference of the same name, took place on Saturday at the Toronto Congress Centre near the end of runway 24R at Toronto's international airport. With only a few sessions and a lot of quality speakers, the organisers kept the signal-to-noise ratio at this conference as good as it gets.
Trowser: A graphical less command that is more
Translating a command line tool to a graphical interface usually means a loss of functionality. However, in the case of the newly released trowser text browser, while I wouldn't swear that the transition has retained all the functionality of the less command that it is intended to replace, I doubt that anyone short of an expert is likely to notice the difference. Not only does trowser offer a comparable wealth of key bindings for moving about displayed text files, but it also adds such features as custom highlighting, a search history, and bookmarks as well. The result is an easy-to-use tool for developers who browse code listings, or anyone who browses log files, HTML pages, or other plain text files.
Using Zotero to manage OpenOffice.org bibliographies
If OpenOffice.org's own bibliography feature doesn't really cut it for you, you have several choices. One popular bibliography solution is Bibus, a cross-platform tool that integrates nicely with OpenOffice.org. It is, however, not the only bibliographical tool out there. In fact, there is another nifty tool called Zotero that turns Firefox into a powerful research tool. More importantly, it comes with an OpenOffice.org extension that allows you to use Zotero as a bibliography database. Zotero also sports a few clever features that make the process of creating and managing bibliographies much more efficient.
Lessons learned from open source Xara's failure
On October 11, 2005, proprietary software maker Xara announced its plans to open the source code to its flagship vector graphics package Xara Xtreme, and with the help of community developers port it to Linux. Today, two years later, the project is stagnant and on the verge of irrelevance, primarily because the company couldn't figure out how to work with the open source community.
Javalobby calls for Java port to OLPC
Rick Ross, founder of Javalobby, a popular site among Java developers, recently wrote an article about the One Laptop Per Child project and how cool it is. Ross also noted that OLPC does not appear on Sun Microsystems 2007 Corporate Social Responsibility Report, which outlines that company's social responsibility obligations. Ross thinks it's time to change that.
Mandriva 2008.0 rocks
Mandriva 2008.0, released this week, is the best version of Mandriva since 7.2.
