Linux News for Jul 30, 2008

• Fanless PC Sports Dual PCI Slots (Jul 30, 2008, 23:00)
  Linux Devices: "Axiomtek has announced the latest in its series of "eBOX" fanless embedded computers targeting industrial automation, digital signage (DSA), gaming/entertainment, and vehicle applications. The eBOX639-822-FL offers Celeron M or Pentium M processors, dual PCI slots and gigabit Ethernet ports, and six each serial and USB interfaces."


• Portugal Rings Up Big Order for Intel's Classmate PCs (Jul 30, 2008, 22:30)
  LinuxInsider: "Intel spokesperson Agnes Kwan said parents of young school children will be able to choose between computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system and ones with an open source Linux operating system, and that the government will distribute the machines to Portugal's elementary school students over the course of the 2008-2009 school year."


• Languages and Language Settings in Moodle (Jul 30, 2008, 22:00)
  Packt: "If our website is able to communicate with people of different languages, globally the popularity of the website would go up. With Moodle, we have the option of making our site more interactive as it offers support for different languages. In this article by William Rice, we will see how to configure different languages on our Moodle website and also look at some of the available language settings."


• Fleury’s Open Remote is All About the Software (Jul 30, 2008, 21:30)
  ZDNet: "It has been over five years since I started writing about wireless applications which live in the air, for home automation, inventory, and health care. Very little has really happened, and the reason might be proprietary architectures. If it is, Marc Fleury has the solution."


• See for Yourself What is Inside the ASUS Eee901 (Jul 30, 2008, 21:00)
  Techrepublic: "While power users will find the ASUS Eee’s limitations to be frustrating, they can still appreciate the engineering prowess that went into the design as revealed in the TechRepublic Cracking Open Photo Gallery."


• Floating Point Math in Bash (Jul 30, 2008, 20:30)
  Linux Journal: "When you think about it, it's surprising how many programming tasks don't require the use of floating point numbers. If you're an embedded systems programmer, you'd probably get fired for using "double" in a C program. If you write PHP or JavaScript, quick, do they even support floating point? One language that doesn't support it is Bash, but let's not let that stop us..."


• SSD vs. SATA RAID: A Performance Benchmark (Jul 30, 2008, 20:00)
  Linux.com: "To see just how much an SSD might improve performance, I used Bonnie++ to benchmark a contemporary SSD as it might be used in a laptop computer."


• OS Roundup: Apple, Out of Touch With Server Room Needs (Jul 30, 2008, 19:30)
  ServerWatch: "...but is it any more ridiculous than using Apple's OS X Server or letting end users work on Macs in the enterprise? Because the truth is, Apple is not really a computer company. It makes toys."


• PCLinuxOS: Definitely “Radically Simple” (Jul 30, 2008, 19:00)
  TechRepublic: "The slogan for PCLinuxOS is "Radically Simple" and, as far as I can tell, it might be one of the most fitting operating system slogans I have seen. But does it apply across the board? From start to finish? I decided it had been too long since I had tried this distribution so I went about giving it a go. I have to say I was certainly impressed."


• Logical Volume Manager - LVM: Partitions, Slices and Frustration (Jul 30, 2008, 18:30)
  NTLUG: "Large disk and partition handling is not a problem that is unique to Linux. In fact, Linux distributions were solving the problem before many commercial Unix's did."
  A good detailed howto with illustrations --ed.


• Dell Releases Wooden PC, Plus Six Fruity Colours (Jul 30, 2008, 18:00)
  APC Magazine: "How's this for a 180? One of the creators of the commodity PC market and a bulk mover of inoffensive beige boxes, Dell has now unveilled what we believe to be one of the most stylish desktop systems on the planet."


• Ten Tricks to Make Linux Boot Faster (Jul 30, 2008, 17:30)
  TechRepublic: "Linux rarely needs to be rebooted. But when it does, it's often slow to boot. Fortunately, there are ways to speed things up. Some of these methods are not terribly difficult. (although some, unfortunately, are). Let's take a look."


• Is Microsoft Getting Ready to Kill Windows? (Jul 30, 2008, 17:00)
  Computerworld: "No, I'm not talking about killing Vista. Microsoft is already burying that living dead operating system as fast it can. I'm talking about killing Windows itself. That's the conclusion I've drawn from David Worthington's story about Microsoft's plans for Midori, a next generation operating system."


• IRC Clients for Linux - A Review (Jul 30, 2008, 16:30)
  Echoes: "Since I'm an IRC addict and I always liked to spend time learning new stuff on IRC, here is a review of several IRC clients for Linux. Some of them are well-known and popular, like XChat, Konversation or Irssi, and others are not so widely used or known, but nevertheless, they deserve mentioning."


• Kernel Space: No Shortage of Tracing Options (Jul 30, 2008, 16:00)
  Computerworld: "...the main surprise is that, after all this time, Linux still does not have a top-quality answer to DTrace..."


• ASUS Eee PC 1000 (Linux) (Jul 30, 2008, 15:30)
  Laptop: "But though it is increasingly difficult to pick from the seemingly interminable Eee PCs on the market, the Eee PC 1000 has risen to be one of our favorites."


• South African Sister Companies Praise Linux-based Accounting Program (Jul 30, 2008, 15:00)
  Linux.com: "One of the main reasons to move away from these program was Windows. Instability ... and lots of viruses is something a small upcoming business can do without."


• The Beauty of Linux (Jul 30, 2008, 14:30)
  Pinoyskull: Here is a 3:46 YouTube video of a Linux 3D desktop in action- very pretty. --ed.


• Microsoft, its Time to Officially Rescind the Linux Lawsuit Threats (Jul 30, 2008, 14:00)
  Network World: "If it stands up says, "Sorry, just kidding!" that won't make the channel partners happy, particularly if they used the threat to convince customers they must buy SUSE or Windows over Red Hat and other distros. But the fact is, we are seeing actions by Microsoft that indicate that the "suing Linux users" jig is up."


• Integrating Linux into Active Directory keeps getting easier (Jul 30, 2008, 13:30)
  Practical Technology: "...LWIS (Likewise Identity Services) enables you to use Active Directory Authentication for your Linux, Unix and Mac PCs."


• KDE 4.1 Review: The Rocky Road of the New KDE (Jul 30, 2008, 13:00)
  Datamation: "However, one remaining obstacle to 4.1 acceptance is that, despite some improvements compared to 4.0, the customization options are still more limited than on the 3.5 desktop."


• Mandriva Linux 2009 Beta 1 released (Jul 30, 2008, 12:30)
  Mandriva Wiki: "The first beta for Mandriva Linux 2009, code named thornicrofti, is now available."


• Oracle Ships Emergency Workaround for Zero-day Flaw (Jul 30, 2008, 12:00)
  ZDNet: "For the first time since the introduction of its quarterly Critical Patch Update process in 2005, Oracle has released an emergency alert to offer mitigation for a zero-day vulnerability that’s been published on the Internet."


• Virtual Hosting With PureFTPd And MySQL On Fedora 9 (Jul 30, 2008, 11:30)
  HowtoForge: "This document describes how to install a PureFTPd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. This is much more performant and allows to have thousands of ftp users on a single machine. In addition to that I will show the use of quota and upload/download bandwidth limits with this setup."


• Give Apache Geronimo a Lift (Jul 30, 2008, 10:00)
  IBM Developerworks: "Lift is a new Web application framework. It is a highly scalable framework built on the Scala programming language. It is the perfect partner for a highly scalable application server, such as Apache Geronimo, especially since Scala compiles to byte code just like the Java language and leverages the Java platform. In this article, you will learn how to create a Web application using Lift and deploy it to Geronimo."


• Deal With XML Parsing Errors in Java APIs (Jul 30, 2008, 08:30)
  IBM Developerworks: "With the ease of XML parsing in the newer Java™ language APIs, from JAXP to JAXB to JAX-WS, XML parsing has become foundational to Java programming. But with the abstractions and higher-level APIs comes an apparent loss of control over the fine-grained interactions between a parser and your XML data. This typically leads to more errors or worse, a complete halt of parsing when even the smallest problem arises. Fortunately, the Simple API for XML (SAX) still provides an easy-to-use means of dealing with errors..."


• Tips and Tricks: What are the Options in Kickstart for Controlling the Behaviour of SELinux? (Jul 30, 2008, 07:00)
  Red Hat Magazine: "The following options can be used in the kickstart configuration file to control SELinux behaviour in a kickstart installation..."
  link fixed -- ed.


• Is Open Solaris in Hot Water? -- No, I Don't Think So (Jul 30, 2008, 05:30)
  Groklaw: "I've been seeing articles implying that Sun may have trouble, now that it has been determined that the Unix copyrights belong to Novell. Here's one example, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols' "Is OpenSolaris in hot water?" -- where a number of interviewees opine more or less yes. I disagree, and I'll show you why I disagree."


• Putting the Sneer Before the Scoop: Joe Nocera and Steve Jobs (Jul 30, 2008, 04:00)
  Standards Blog: "...although rumors have swirled, Apple has refused to state whether or not Jobs has had a recurrence of his cancer - or disclose any meaningful details at all. Even on calls with securities analysts, Apple's response has only been that "Steve's health is a private matter.""


• The Most Interesting README File Ever? (Jul 30, 2008, 02:30)
  fsckin w/ linux: "Another linux zealot at my old job gave me the heads up on this, it’s directly from gnome-cups-manager, and I thought you would all enjoy it."


• To Catch a Thief (Jul 30, 2008, 01:00)
  Linux Magazine: "Crime scene: the server room…The thief doesn’t need a key card or the protection of darkness – an intruder can use the Internet to come and go. But despite the secret entrance, the attacker still leaves behind some telltale traces."


• Cyber Threats Accelerate and Browser Vulnerabilities Proliferate (Jul 30, 2008, 00:30)
  Help Net Security "IBM today released results from its X-Force 2008 Midyear Trend Statistics report that indicates cyber-criminals are adopting new automation techniques and strategies that allow them to exploit vulnerabilities much faster than ever before."