Showing headlines posted by dave

2004. The Mozilla Foundation releases an important security update for Firefox. All users should upgrade to the latest version of the Firefox Preview Release. A patch is available for current Preview Release users.

O'Reilly has published a book that explores Sun Microsystems' Java Desktop System (JDS), giving users new and already familiar with the Linux desktop an in-depth look. While the authors say JDS behaves pretty much the way a Windows or Mac user would expect, the more powerful features of JDS make it a standout for home or office use.

No, Linux desktops' multimedia capabilities are not on par with Windows' -- things are now at the point where Linux is preferable to Windows.

With a career spanning nearly four decades, Todd Rundgren has done virtually everything. Literally. He's produced best-selling records, composed scores, and released several solo albums, including the first interactive music album ever, No World Record in 1993. He's also an accomplished hacker. According to Rundgren, if he hadn't discovered music, he'd probably be a Linux geek. Read our exclusive interview with Todd, the god.

Find the power buried in your email program

Linux is an extremely flexible operating system. With just a little bit of creativity, Linux can be tailored to your laptop, making your mobile computer just as useful as your desktop or server. Try these ten tips and keep yourself and Linux on-the-go.

Linux was created on the first 32-bit CPU in the x86 CPU family, the 80386. But the days of 32-bit computing are coming to an end. Luckily, the AMD64 provides compatibility features that ease the transition. Here's a hands-on guide to building and benchmarking a 64-bit Linux desktop based on AMD64.

While Perl's diversity makes "...easy things easy, and hard things possible", Linux's diversity makes "some things easy, and many things hard." Can I crank open the kernel code to port it to a new processor? Sure. Can I run two graphical user interface applications and expect the same look and feel and interaction style from each? Uh, maybe. Diversity is both a blessing and a curse. It fosters innovation, but stymies adoption. Encouraged in the wrong places -- for example, on the desktop -- it can even cause great confusion.

In the early days of Linux, users had modest needs to create graphics, so the then-nascent GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) served them well. However, as Linux and the GIMP became popular, more sophisticated users -- even some graphics professionals -- began to rely on the GIMP for their day-to-day needs. As often occurs, as demand for the GIMP grew, so did the number of feature requests. Fortunately, the GIMP developers worked hard to keep up with expensive, proprietary image editing software available on other platforms, and today, the GIMP is "the Photoshop of Linux," a category-killer application.

Recently, a company named Open Source Risk Management (OSRM, located at http://www.osriskmanagement.com) conducted an extensive review of the Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels and concluded that the kernels contain no copyrighted code. With their review complete, the company is now offering indemnification for legal costs associated with open source software, at a rate of $30,000 for $1 million of coverage.

Picture this: after school, your kids come home and ravage the pantry. Detecting the now-empty cupboards, your home's electronic inventory assistant emails you an urgent shopping list: pick up more Cheez-Its, Cap'n Crunch, orange juice, milk, eggs, and Eggo waffles

Security has long been an important computer issue, but it's become increasingly relevant as the number and severity of threats has risen. One security risk of great concern is network data sniffing. When data is passed over a local network wire or when it's passed between networks, the potential exists for parties other than the sender or recipient to intercept the data. Sniffing can give miscreants access to your passwords, sensitive documents, or even just a peek into your link.

If you've administered any remote Linux machines, then you're probably already familiar with SSH. As you may know, SSH provides secure, encrypted network communication. Utilities like ssh and sftp, which are based on SSH, protect remote login sessions and file transfers, respectively, and have largely subsumed similar but insecure and unencrypted utilities such as ftp, rlogin, rsh, rcp, and telnet. (In fact, if any of your systems still use telnet, put down this magazine at once, go disable telnet, install and enable SSH, and then continue reading.)

On a busy server, it's often hard to keep track of what's running and when, so from time to time, you may find yourself wondering what MySQL is doing. Luckily, MySQL provides a degree of transparency that makes it relatively easy to peer inside and see what's up.

In the previous "Perl of Wisdom," I introduced my templating system of choice, the aptly-named Template Toolkit (TT). Continuing from where I left off, let's look at some of TT's other features.

Whether you work for a large Fortune 500 company or a small start-up, chances are that most of your application engineers are embroiled in the support and maintenance of your online store. And no wonder. Given the complexity of most e-commerce deployments -- mixes of hefty portions of business logic, hardware, and software -- it's rare to find a company not struggling with heady infrastructure issues such as reliability, performance, accuracy, and cost.

I fancy myself a Linux expert. I was a Unix system administrator before Linux existed, and these days, I run Linux on four servers and four desktops in my home office. But, even so, there are things that I haven't been able to do. The one that bugs me the most is my inability to get Wi-Fi networking working on my Centrino-enabled Toshiba laptop. I know my way around hardware. I know my way around networking. I know my way around Linux. And, despite all that, I can't get a perfectly ordinary Wi-Fi chipset to work with Linux.

This week we have seen numerous reports in the trade press referring to Gartner UK analyst Annette Jump claiming that pre-installing Linux on PCs encourages piracy of Windows. Open Source Industry Australia(OSIA) earlier today issued a press release in which it challenged the validity of Jump's findings. "We dispute Jump's conclusion and her figures. Without a fully specified methodology and a presentation of all the raw numbers and polling methods, these findings are extremely dubious. Additionally, Jump's logic is problematic at best and farcical at worst."

The fight against spam is getting more serious as the net's big players impose conditions on bulk mail senders. From October, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Earthlink and Comcast want those that send lots of messages to their users to comply with new mail standards...Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Sender-ID.

Sent into the depths of the Internet, you find yourself dodging pop-ups, fending off Trojans, and running from the behemoth that is Microsoft, you find yourself wandering the depths of ibiblio.org, a repository which holds hundreds of gigabytes of Linux applications, distributions, and documentation. As you venture deeper into the directory structure, you are suddenly stopped by a tired Linus Torvalds. You feel just like Harrison Ford did when he rediscovered the Holy Grail just as Linus speaks, "Choose wisely." You never thought you would ever get this far and as a result never really gave it too much thought. All of the choices lay in front of your eyes. Which distribution of Linux do you go for? You step back to contemplate all of the choices which stand before you. There are the flashy Red Hat, Mandrake, and SUSE with all of their enterprise support and almost idiot-proof configurations sitting next to the sporty young Gentoo, the down-to-Earth Slackware, and the venerable Debian praised for its stability.