Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

There's no dearth of Web feed readers for Linux that allow you to keep tabs on new postings on a Web site. But what if the Web site or page you're interested in doesn't provide a feed? Specto is a nifty little Python application that lets you monitor changes to static or dynamic pages. You can configure Specto to monitor changes to wiki pages, blog posts, forum threads, your email inbox, and even files and folders on your own system. An unobtrusive pop-up from its system tray icon informs you of all changes, so you don't have to hop around looking for updates.

Tobias König is a Computer Science student and one of the core developers of Akonadi, one of the innovative technologies that will be implemented in KDE4. Akonadi will be a platform independent innovative storage solution for personal data. In this interview, Tobias König shares his impressions about the integration into the KDE desktop environment and Akonadi's development and features.

Last month the TrueCrypt Foundation released TrueCrypt 5.0, which finally introduces a Linux GUI for the cross-platform encryption application. TrueCrypt 5.0's numerous other enhancements include a Mac OS X port, XTS operation mode, the ability to encrypt a system partition or drive under Windows, and the addition of the SHA-512 hash algorithm.

The next big release of Eclipse could see IBM's overwhelming dominance of the open source tools platform reduced, according to the foundation's chief. Mike Milinkovich hopes e4, as it's being called, will introduce a simple code base that's accessible to a wide pool of developers and reduces reliance on IBMers with an intimate working and historical knowledge of the current, huge 3.x code base.

Red Hat will need to walk a fine line in the middleware market. Even as the open source company continues to build its channel, Red Hat today opened its wallet to acquire a middleware consulting firm that specializes in JBoss applications. Does that mean Red Hat is ready to compete with partners?

Whether you’re a returning guest or a just thinking about attending, the Red Hat Summit is fast approaching. Check out this year’s Summit preview video, and when you’re done, hit the event website and get the details. We’d love to see you there. And get some chowda.

One day, Google believes, software developers will love its "non-existent" Android handset just as much as they love the iPhone - and maybe more. Speaking this morning at eComm, a conference dedicated to "emerging communications," Google mobile platforms guru Rich Miner acknowledged that for the moment, Apple may have an advantage. After all, Steve Jobs and company have actually shipped a piece of hardware, while the first Android handset won't arrive until "the second half of this year." But Miner also told the crowd that Stevo hasn't treated developers as well as they deserve.

In the closing days of 2007, open source voice-over-IP (VoIP) project WengoPhone found itself without a sponsor. The project's creator and underwriter, Wengo, announced it was halting its support after more than three years of development. Fortunately, longtime contributor MBDSYS offered to take over maintainership of the project, and has begun the transition, setting out a roadmap and reinvigorating the developer base.

The other day, Wal-Mart let it slip that it would no longer be selling Linux-powered computers in its stores. The retail giant will, however, continue to sell Linux desktop and laptop systems via its online store. On March 10, Wal-Mart spokesperson Melissa O'Brien told the Associated Press that Wal-Mart had decided not to restock its in-store gOS Linux-powered Everex Green gPC TC2502. "This really wasn't what our customers were looking for," O'Brien said.

In many organizations, copiers get little respect. Often relegated to a break room or storage closet, they are underutilized and underappreciated, and get no attention from the IT department. Yet, multifunction copiers can play a critical role in reducing operating costs and become a hub for document processing.

Amarok is a popular audio player under Linux. It can manage external storage devices, transfer music to your iPod, display lyrics, and play various formats. Although Amarok supports scripts to extend its functionality, not many users know about the powerful features that these simple plugins can provide.

I have a server (LDAP and NFS) which occasionally seems to take a while to react. Load average is consistently high (10-12 for 4 CPUs, which AIUI means 2.5-3 per CPU); response may also be being affected by disk I/O.

In the open source operating system world Linux gets most of the attention and many of the other free operating systems struggle to even get heard. One of these is PC-BSD, an open source OS based on the stable FreeBSD OS and today iXsystems announced the release of PC-BSD Edison, or version 1.5.

If you are an avid gamer, you probably dual-boot your favorite Linux distribution with Windows, because that's where you find most new cutting-edge games. But what if you could run your Windows games on Linux? PlayOnLinux is an open source Python-scripted front end that helps you install and play tons of Windows-only games -- and then some!

Back in February, LWN published a discussion of the vmsplice() exploit which showed how the failure to check permissions for a read operation led to a buffer overflow within the kernel. Subsequently, a linux-kernel reader pointed out that the article stopped short of a complete explanation: this is not an ordinary buffer overflow exploit. Travel schedules and such prevented the writing of an immediate followup, but your editor would still like to tell the full story. So this article picks up where the last one left off and describes how the vmsplice() exploit makes use of this buffer overflow to take over the system.

The OpenOffice suite has come a long way since its birth as Star Office. It is no longer a self-contained monolith, but a nice normal Linux-style modular application that lets you choose the bits you want, and there are hundreds of bits to choose from. The main components are Writer, Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (slide show), Base (database), Math (equation editor), and Draw. It supports dozens of languages both in your own documents and the Help pages. Officially it runs on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD.

Firefox 3 is in testing, with the latest build, beta 4, released Monday. Mozilla is aiming for a final release of its flagship product before the end of the first quarter of 2008. Let's take a look at the changes coming down the pike. You can grab a copy of the latest Firefox 3 beta from mozilla.com. Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Universal Binaries are provided in more than 40 languages. The Linux version is a bzip2-compressed tar archive. You can unpack into any location on your system.

The organisers of Akademy 2008 are looking for sponsorship. Akademy is the KDE World Summit, this year taking place in Sint-Katelijne-Waver, Belgium in August. Sponsorship is an opportunity to promote your company or product to the developers, users, deployers and consultants who will attend the conference from around the world.

AjaXplorer presents a browser-based file explorer interface to your Web server using AJAX. It comes in handy when you want to allow non-technical people to also access your file server, possibly over the Internet. Most non-techies are familiar with the file explorer interface, so having one inside a browser window is easy to get used to.

EZblue Software touts EZblue Business Server as "a fully integrated [L]inux server. It has a built-in file server, print server, Web server, mail server, and a whole lot more" -- just like many other distributions, of course. One place where EZblue attempts to distinguish itself for its target market of small and medium businesses (SMB) running Windows on their desktops and laptops is by offering the proprietary Magellan Desktop application for Windows, which "enables Windows XP, 2000, and 98SE users to have fast and easy access to their files and folders stored on the EZblue server."