Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

gpgdir uses GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) to encrypt and decrypt files or a directory tree. You could accomplish the same objective by tarring the filesystem up and then encrypting the tar.gz file with GnuPG, but then you would still have to shred or wipe every file in the original directory tree. With gpgdir the whole tree is encrypted in one command.

A couple of years back, Oracle chief Larry Ellison and then Sun CEO Scott McNealy held an event in Redwood City to renew their vows. Oracle signed on to ship Java for ten more years, and Sun started bundling Oracle's database on its servers at no charge. That last bit was meant to give Sun an edge over hardware rivals, although we can't claim to have heard of it ever making a difference in the market and aren't even sure the deal is still going. What we do know is that Oracle is working over Sun customers who have adopted the multi-core T2 processor and its recent successor the T2+. In fact, Oracle looks set on exacting some measure of punishment on Sun customers who - dare we say it - want to use the T2 boxes for databases.

The Phoronix Test Suite is for testing hardware performance under Linux. It's still very young and incomplete, but it's worth getting acquainted with--it is based on the the scripts developed by the fine folks at Phoronix for hardware testing.

If you use wireless networking in GNU/Linux with native drivers, then chances are that you benefit from work done by the Rt2x00 project. You may use the MadWifi Atheros drivers with OpenHal, or drivers for the Realtek RTL8180 chipset, but most likely you use one of the drivers developed by the Rt2x00 for Ralink chipsets. In the nearly four years since the project began, its work has moved from having a reputation for bugginess to the point where some of its drivers are now part of the latest Linux kernels. Recently, Linux.com talked to three of the lead developers on the project about where Rt2x00 has been and where it is going.

Arguably the world’s most popular free anti-virus software, Grisoft’s AVG, has just been upgraded, set for free download from Friday, the 25th of April. We’re sure AVG’s servers are about to get hammered even harder as millions of AVG 7.5 users take advantage of the new version!

Your editor has certainly attended no shortage of Linux-related conferences. Many of those are developer conferences, which are invariably interesting events. Others are oriented around marketing or outreach, with rather more variable results. The Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit, which ran from April 8 to 10, is unique, though, in that it attracts representatives from throughout the Linux ecosystem. Developers are not in short supply (though it seemed like there were fewer than last year), but those developers spend three days talking with corporate executives, industry analysts, and, crucially, a number of high-profile users. This mixture of people creates a very different dynamic which supports a whole range of interesting conversations.

Discussing the latest breakage of the linux-next tree, Stephen Rothwell noted that the problem went unnoticed due to the arm tree not currently being included,"this is why I would have liked you to participate in the linux-next tree ...". Arm maintainer Russell King questioned the usefulness, saying,"linux-next will not give me anything which -mm isn't giving me. As I said in the discussion, linux-next value is _very_ small for me. Sorry but true."

By default, amaroK stores information about your [music] collection including listening habits and rankings into a SQLite database file on your filesystem. If you only use amaroK on a single computer, this works fine, but if you run it on multiple computers you might want your information to be persistent across machines. amaroK supports the use of a MySQL database for this type of storage, but it does require a bit of a setup beforehand to use. This hack will describe the steps necessary to migrate to a MySQL collection database.

An increase in the interest and use of open source in clinical research has led to rapid growth of the community surrounding the OpenClinica open source clinical trial software from Akaza Research. In April 2007 this community comprised approximately 1,300 registered members. One year later, this figure has increased by 155 percent to over 3,500.

Are you in the mood for some '90s-style Web browsing with no graphic elements? Or, more realistically, do you work with a Linux console and often need to check something on the Web? If so, get acquainted with text-based Web browsers such as w3m, Lynx, and the similarly named Links. While browsing the Web without a mouse, graphics, fancy fonts, JavaScript, and Java can be sorely restrictive, it can also be quite speedy. If you're a fan of function keys and special commands, you'll be pleased to learn that these browsers provide plenty of shortcuts for every taste. After you gain experience, you'll be able to navigate around with just a few key taps.

Nicholas Negroponte, the head of the One Laptop per Child project, is in the news again, this time trying to rationalise the appearance of Windows XP on the laptop manufactured by the project.

Free Geek is a not-for-profit community organization that recycles used technology to provide computers, education, Internet access and job skills training to those in need in exchange for community service. Linux Journal reader Kevin, from Portland, Oregon, tells us, "I've donated equipment and money to them (Free Geek). I love giving working computer gear to them knowing that someone will learn computer skills by refurbishing it, loading Linux on it, and passing it on to someone truly in need of a computer. After 24 hours of donated time the volunteer gets to take home a computer for their own."

In an iHealthBeat Special Report, experts on open-source software discussed the next steps for Open Health Tools, an initiative designed to encourage the use of the software and promote interoperability in health care.

Ubuntu, Linspire, and Freespire users can now install "Google Earth" with a single click, says Linspire. The desktop Linux distributor has added support for the free mapping application to its CNR ("click-n-run") installer, a user-friendly tool currently beta-testing for a wide variety of desktop Linux distributions. Linspire said the version of Google Earth that CNR supports will work with Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10 (32-bit), Linspire 6.0, and Freespire 2.0. Presumably, it will also support Ubuntu's Hardy Heron release scheduled for tomorrow, as Linspire has promised CNR support for that release.

The ability to import and export data is crucial to any database management system, and OpenOffice.org Base is no exception. While you may be surprised to discover that OpenOffice.org lacks a dedicated import/export feature, it does allow you to get data into and out of a database in a variety of ways.

A step-by-step tutorial on setting up Mandriva One 2008 Spring (Mandriva 2008.1) desktop (GNOME) has been published on HowtoForge.com. Written by Oliver Meyer, the six-page tutorial, called "The Perfect Desktop," covers basic configuration, and then steps through installations for over a dozen Linux applications. Mandriva has been around for awhile, but the distro was substantially updated for the 2.6.22.9 Linux kernel in a Mandriva 2008 release in October.

Stripped-down operating systems made specifically for virtual machine appliances have tickled the fancy of the Linux collective, and these types of systems are keeping commercial distributors busy pushing out their versions of the concept. Last September at VMworld, Canonical unveiled Ubuntu JeOS — pronounced juice and short for "just enough operating system." The idea was to rip out general purpose software from the OS, leaving only a lightweight container that ISVs can customize for their particular application. This in theory makes an appliance smaller and more efficient in a virtual environment.

Using toast takes the burden out of building, installing, and keeping track of software built from source. You can use toast to build and maintain software installed in your /home directory as a regular user, or to set up software for all users in /usr/local. toast can obtain packages over HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and via SSH and CVS. It can handle most archive formats, as well as .rpm and .deb packages.

Thanks to a wonderful new open source tool called Wubi, downloading and installing the latest version of Ubuntu Linux is now a snap for Windows users. It’s a pity the Ubuntu development team still hasn’t taken the hint with its latest release, Hardy Heron.

All your phones, are belong to Google — a brief overview of Android, the new software stack created by Google for the Open Handset Alliance. The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) is an industry trade group comprising more than 30 technology and mobile companies. The focus of the OHA is to accelerate innovation in the mobile application and hardware space and to provide consumers with a more comprehensive and inexpensive mobile device experience. Android is a new, mobile application development framework developed by Google for the OHA that represents part of a greater promise from OHA members to make the open platform an industry success.