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If you have ever pulled your hair out in frustration over data loss, no doubt the word 'backup' has special meaning in your life. Databases offer a nice way to catalog data, but with the amount of data being trusted into MySQL databases these days, the after-effects of an unwise DROP DATABASE command, an unlucky system crash, or a failed hand-edit of the table structure are catastrophic and can be unrecoverable -- unless you have a backup to restore from.

In recent years, Open Source has become a relevant and strangely addictive force in IT. As the Internet age has dominated businesses and consumers with the same well oiled, yet clunky machine, Open Source has crept out of the dimly lit bedrooms occupied by toiling hackers and into the network rooms and 'enterprise centric strategies' of todays businesses. Open Source has not just become more acceptable, it has become more relevant.

Most software for personal computers in the developed world presupposes a single user per computer, whether it's located at home or at the office. This is a rare situation in Africa, and the networking and security aspects of Linux help to set up such group environments, as does the ability to customized source code to Africa's culture and needs.

The hottest topic of discussion in the IT sector to day is whether Microsoft will open its source code. If Gates surrenders to the Linux challenge, it will be the biggest corporate story of this generation.

Mobile News Qtopa 2.1 PDA Edition, the latest version of Trolltech's award-winning development platform and user interface for Linux-based personal digital assistants (PDAs), is now available for download under the open source GNU general public (GPL) license.

Application News The GIMP developers are proud to announce the availability of version 2.2.0 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program. About nine months after version 2.0 hit the road, we have completed another development cycle and can bring a new stable GIMP to our users' desktops. The GIMP developers are proud to release version 2.2 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program. About nine months after version 2.0 hit the road, we have completed another development cycle and can bring a new stable GIMP to our users' desktops.

The team that put Firefox together, Mozilla Foundation, now offers a free standalone e-mail application, called Thunderbird. But this time, the case for switching from Microsoft products is less compelling. I just can't see too many people abandoning Microsoft's Outlook, if they use it. Outlook is the gold standard in e-mail programs, despite its $109 list price. Among other things, Thunderbird lacks a calendar application, and its tools for sorting your incoming messages are rather rudimentary.

There is a nice (but rather long) reply from Bruno Souza (Javali Project's Leader) to Onno Kluyt's question of "What do you think (the open sourcing of Java) does that people can't do today?"

In most of the articles and forum entries everyone always mentions that installing Mono is greatly simplified by using Red Carpet. Now that I've done it, I'd have to agree. Getting there was, however, not as easy as I would have liked. In this article I'll provide the step by step instructions for installing Mono on SuSE Linux Professional 9.1 using Red Carpet 2.2.3. After reading, you should have a clear idea of how to get through the installation, and hopefully avoid some of the snags I ran into. In the end, with this article, setting up Red Carpet will be as easy as using it to install Mono.

Some of you may have read my previous entry that sparked quite a bit of debate. Looking back on the content, I realize that the title of the entry could be misinterpreted as FUD or even trolling.

I’ve always been a bit of a Linux junkie. Sadly, being a gamer, I’m stuck with the Microsoft OS’s if Itux baseball want to play most games. (Yes, I know there are options, but if I’m going to run Windows games, it’s easier to run them natively.) I still keep Linux on a couple of machines here.

Novell has launched an indemnification scheme to protect its SuSE Linux Enterprise Server customers against what it described as "certain intellectual property challenges to Linux". Novell's Linux Indemnification Programme follows a similar announcement from Hewlett Packard last year, but is not limited to copyright infringement claims from The SCO Group.

GoblinX is a bootable "live CD" distribution based on Slackware Linux, whose primary goal is to create a more pleasant and functional desktop, standardizing all icons and themes to make it easy for novice users to learn about available applications.

Red Hat Inc., which makes software for the Linux operating system, said late Wednesday its profit soared in the latest quarter as revenue jumped 55 percent, though revenue came in short of Wall Street's expectations.

Following two months after the release of the 2.6.9 Zonked Quokka Linux kernel, Linux creator Linus Torvalds released Woozy Numbat, the 2.6.10 kernel.

Retired government worker Robert Biggs uses his computer mainly to get recipes and check e-mail. Public relations consultant Phil Gomes uses his to maintain an elaborate personal Web site. The two have little in common -- except that their computers both run on the Linux operating system.

If you are looking for an easy to use program to listen to your favorite CDs then you should try KsCD. KsCD comes with KDE and if you use that window environment it will most likely be installed by default. You can find it in the Kicker menu under 'Multimedia'.

In the late 1990s, we thought Linux needed a "killer app" that would make general PC users view Linux as a necessity the same way they first viewed Windows as a necessity due to Microsoft Office. However, a new direction in open source adoption seems to be emerging that might require a re-think and a change in our perspective.

The Canopy Group has ousted its CEO and CFO, leaving questions about whether subsidiary SCO will continue its Linux-related lawsuits.

Despite lawsuits and charges of unfair competition from the likes of Netscape and others, Microsoft dominates browser software with over 90% market share.