Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

As we all know, Linux distributions are freely available over the Internet. However, prohibitive bandwidth costs, thanks mainly to Telkom's stranglehold, mean that downloading distros of several hundred megabytes or even several gigabytes can be prohibitive. It is much easier and cheaper to just get a CD burned, either at cost or for a small premium.

If you are running a blog (or any Web publishing system, for that matter) that relies on a database back end, you will sooner or later face the problem of backing up the content stored in the database. One way to go about it is to build a backup tool using OpenOffice.org Base. Since Base can pull data from a MySQL or any ODBC-compliant data source, you can create a simple database that connects to the blog's back end and extracts content from it, which you can then export in different formats.

LinuxSecurity.com: Security is at the forefront of everyone's mind and a firewall can be an integral part of your Linux defense. But is Michael's Rush's "Linux Firewalls," the newest release from NoStarchPress, up for the challenge? Eckie S. here at Linuxsecurity.com gives you the low-down on this newest addition to the Linux security resource library and how it's one of the best ways to crack down on attacks to your Linux network.

KDE4 edged closer to final release this week with the development team announcing the KDE4 beta 4 release, the last step before final release candidates are built. Although intended primarily as a bugfix release, beta 4 has enough cool features to impress.

What could make the Free Software Foundation (FSF), proprietary software companies, and at least one venture capitalist into allies? The End Software Patents (ESP) coalition, a new organization poised to swing into action next month under the leadership of Ben Klemens. The campaign currently has seed funding of a quarter million dollars from sources those associated with the group won't disclose, and hopes to augment that with donations from individuals and companies for a struggle that, to judge by the usual amount of time it takes to push major changes through the US Supreme Court, could take five years or more to complete.

In public health, harm reduction is a practice that, rather than trying to eradicate potentially dangerous choices like prostitution, tries to minimize their effects. Often, the practice involves a limited condoning of the practice, such as safe injection sites for addicts. Harm reduction is the path that Fedora 8 has chosen on the issue of MP3 and other non-free codecs in the form of Codec Buddy, a Codeina-based program that tries to educate users about free software while giving them easy legal access to codecs by linking to the commercial Fluendo site. It's a decision about which the Fedora Board and community leaders feel considerable ambivalence.

China, which has long wished to develop its own computer industry, has chosen to go with Linux on the software side. Loongson is its hope for the hardware side. The Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), a department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has been developing the Loongson processor since 2002. Rather than use the x86 instruction set used in chips from Intel and AMD, Loongson uses MIPS, an instruction set patented by MIPS Technologies. This means that Loongson chips are unable to run the full version of Microsoft Windows, so they run Linux instead.

Pundits say it is simply impossible to count all of the Linux servers in the market today. The Linux community is questioning research that suggests the open-source operating system is losing market share to Windows on preinstalled x86 servers, saying that Linux is undercounted in those kinds of studies. An analysis of IDC Quarterly Server Tracker figures for the past six quarters showed that Linux growth started to falter and reverse its positive course relative to both Windows Server and the market as a whole over that period.

The KDE Community is happy to release the fourth Beta for KDE 4.0. This Beta aimed at further polishing of the KDE codebase and we would love to start receiving feedback from testers. At the same time, a Release Candidate for the KDE 4.0 Development Platform is released. This Development Platform contains the bits and pieces needed to run and build applications using KDE 4 technology. The purpose of this Development Platform is to make it easier for third parties to port their applications to KDE 4, without having to wait until the full desktop is polished enough for the final 4.0 release.

Network administrators frequently use the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) to implement a centralized directory server. You can use LDAP to authenticate users in Apache. Two popular open source LDAP solutions are OpenLDAP and Red Hat Directory Server. According to the Apache documentation, Novell LDAP and iPlanet Directory Server are also supported. This article focuses on OpenLDAP, but the concepts and examples should be applicable to the others.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and Monsoon Multimedia announced yesterday that an agreement was reached to dismiss the GNU General Public License (GPL) enforcement lawsuit filed by SFLC on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox. As this settlement prevents the case from going to court, the SFLC's defence of the GPL remains untested in a US courtroom.

Of all the tasks in FreeBSD, setting up a broadband connection isprobably one of the easiest. All the various BSDs are built aroundnetworking, and most broadband connections operate pretty much like anextended LAN, using the same hardware, often called an“ethernet”connection:...

Medsphere Releases Code for Development Testing Automation Framework 'Strongwind' Enhances Software Quality, Supports Open Source Community ALISO VIEJO, California, October 30, 2007 - Medsphere Systems Corporation today announced the release of code for a user interface test automation framework that enables developers to create automated quality assurance scripts to test features of user interface applications. Dubbed Strongwind, this new tool developed by Medsphere engineers has improved the process of testing updates and enhancements of Medsphere's OpenVista electronic health record (EHR), a commercial version of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' VistA solution.

Crossbeam Systems has started shipping a massive chassis-style, "unified threat management" (UTM) system based on an open Linux OS. The X-Series UTM server runs the company's Linux-based "XOS" OS, and targets highly scalable firewalls and other security applications for large data centers and service providers.

A settlement has been reached in the case filed last month against Monsoon Multimedia by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) on behalf of two BusyBox developers. BusyBox is a collection of lightweight, standard utilities that is often used in embedded devices -- and has also been the victim of at least 18 possible license violations in the past. As reported earlier on Linux.com, the case concerned Monsoon's shipment of code borrowed from BusyBox, in a product called Hava -- without any accompanying offer of source code, as required by the GNU General Public License (GPL), under which BusyBox is released.

Even if you're too old for trick-or-treating this Halloween, you can still get in the spirit of things with these free software games, tools, and applications. Why should kids get to have all the fun?

A recent study has found that open source software's adoption by business has exceeded analysts' expectations, with bright prospects in the future.

Over at our sister site LinuxDevices, we're always looking at small, embedded-Linux systems. While reviewing Freespire recently on a Mini koobox, an Apple Mini-sized system, I began to wonder, Just how small do full-featured, Linux-powered PCs come?

Over time, a filesystem accumulates a lot of useless items. FSlint is a nifty little tool that helps you clean your filesystem by pointing out junk in the form of empty directories, corrupt symlinks, files with bad names, duplicate and temp files, and more. However, its usefulness is marred by a virtually total lack of documentation and a GUI that takes some getting used to.

Uruguay has placed an order for 100,000 of the laptops aimed at children in the developing world, the first firm order received by the organisation.