Linux News for Nov 24, 2008

• Debug Your Shell Scripts With bashdb (Nov 24, 2008, 23:33)
  Linux.com: "The Bash Debugger Project (bashdb) lets you set breakpoints, inspect variables, perform a backtrace, and step through a bash script line by line. In other words, it provides the features you expect in a C/C++ debugger to anyone programming a bash script."


• The Netbook Newbie's Guide to Linux (Nov 24, 2008, 23:03)
  Register Hardware: "Episode Three-- Considering that Linux netbooks are designed to present a simplified interface that can be used by complete newbies, it's amazing how buzzy hackers have become about them. Even people who wouldn't consider themselves hardcore techies love to tinker under these machines' hoods."


• OLPC Giveaway Program Hits Oz (Nov 24, 2008, 22:33)
  Builder AU: "The Australian subsidiary of the non-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organisation today said it would commence a local "Give 1, Get 1" program on November 30 that would deliver the machines to both geeks and disadvantaged children."


• I've Got A Penguin in My Briefs (Nov 24, 2008, 22:03)
  Linux Magazine: "The practice of law is a knowledge, information, and document-intensive profession. In many respects, lawyers ply their trade in the same way independent programmers do: we sell our expertise, experience and technical skill in using what is, essentially, the aboriginal "open" source code -- the code of laws and courtroom procedure."


• IE, Firefox, and the Add-on Security Problem (Nov 24, 2008, 21:43)
  The Open Road: "Microsoft blames add-ons for its Internet Explorer security woes, according to InternetNews, yet in separate news from TechCrunch Mozilla's Firefox just hit its one billionth add-on and yet delivers better security, according to several studies."


• Switching from FrontPage to KompoZer (Nov 24, 2008, 21:33)
  LinuxPlanet: "As so many wise persons say, migrating from Windows on your computer desktop to Linux is all about having the right applications. Eric Geier introduces KompoZer as a good option for users wanting to find a Microsoft FrontPage replacement."


• Open-Source Mod for Grand Theft Auto (Nov 24, 2008, 21:03)
  Linux Magazine: "Today we are marking a new milestone in the history of Multi Theft Auto [...] we have made the decision to re-launch Multi Theft Auto as an open-source project."


• The Little SCO That Cried Wolf (Nov 24, 2008, 20:43)
  Cyber Cynic: "...the big, bad wolves--IBM, Red Hat, and Novell--had attacked it with their big nasty Linux penguin buddy, Tux the Destroyer! And-oh no!--they had stolen SCO's picnic basket of Unix intellectual property goodies."


• Fedora 10: the GNU/Linux Desktop Steps Forward (Nov 24, 2008, 20:33)
  Datamation: "Any release of a GNU/Linux distribution marks a milestone in a continuous cycle of software development. However, Fedora 10 promises to be a larger milestone than most, both for its development community and users, according to Paul W. Frields, the Fedora leader and chair."


• Linux Community To Redmond - Do The Right Thing (Nov 24, 2008, 20:03)
  Blog of Helios: "Microsoft IS paying attention to what the Linux Community writes...it's come to a point where they can no longer ignore the obvious. With their stockholders on the verge of revolt and their numbers falling quickly, to do otherwise would be financial suicide."


• Linux Has Moved Away From Geekdom (Nov 24, 2008, 19:33)
  IT Toolbox: "Linux has made some very big improvements over the past few years and I have always said that it is ready for everyone to use, if they can only get out of the proprietary mindset."


• Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris vs. FreeBSD Benchmarks (Nov 24, 2008, 19:03)
  Phoronix: "We had begun by providing Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10 benchmarks and had found the performance of this popular Linux distribution to become slower with time... In this article, we are now comparing the 64-bit performance of Ubuntu 8.10 against the latest test releases of OpenSolaris 2008.11 and FreeBSD 7.1."


• McDonald's Sandwich Patent (Nov 24, 2008, 18:33)
  Open... "The present invention relates to a sandwich assembly tool and methods of making a sandwich, which may be a hot or cold sandwich, quickly by pre-assembly of various sandwich components and simultaneous preparation of different parts of the same sandwich."


• SCO v. Novell is Final -- For Now (Nov 24, 2008, 18:03)
  Linux Journal: "Way back in July, the word rang out that SCO - the arch-villains bent on squeezing every dime they can out of Linux - had been vanquished by the valiant legal team at Novell to the tune of $2.5+ million. Now comes word that the victory is final - or at least, as final as can be expected."


• Sounds of Crashing Hard Drives (Nov 24, 2008, 17:33)
  O'Reilly Digital Media: "That's all it is. Links to recordings of hard drives crashing."


• Microsoft, Rob Enderle, and Their Conflicting Perceptions of Reality (Nov 24, 2008, 17:03)
  Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog: "Judging from the e-mails, however, people at Microsoft aren't always interested in his advice. The exchanges provide a rare glimpse of back-channel communications in the technology industry -- and illustrate how they can go awry."


• The Sad Story of the em28xx Driver (Nov 24, 2008, 16:33)
  LWN.net: "What we have here is a classic story of an impedance mismatch between a developer and the development community. In the process, this long story has helped to give the Video4Linux development community a bit of a reputation as a dysfunctional family - a perception which those developers are only now beginning to overcome."


• On the Death and 441-Year Life of the Pixel (Nov 24, 2008, 16:03)
  OSNews: "However, there are exceptions - and this is one that really boggles the mind: the pixel? One of those little dots on your screen? It's well over 400 years old."


• Defending the Flame of Linux Freedom (Nov 24, 2008, 15:33)
  TechRadar: "Increasingly we're seeing big business jump on the Linux bandwagon, as companies wake up to the money that can be made out of a community of developers working for free."


• Advanced Linux Distributions You Should Try (Nov 24, 2008, 15:03)
  Internetling: "Some people will argue with me in that these GNU/Linux distributions are as advanced as you want them to be. Well, of course Linux is all about choice. I took the user base perspective though and what I have for you today is a few distros which do not hide the manual (or for people like me, beautiful) underlying configuration"


• Why Apple and Google Need to Get Into the Netbook Business (Nov 24, 2008, 14:33)
  Tech Broiler: "...I feel that Ubuntu Netbook Remix is probably not the ideal OS to hand to your typical netbook consumer who really just wants the device to "just work".


• World's Smallest Humanoid Robot Can Run Linux (Nov 24, 2008, 14:03)
  LinuxDevices: "Mobisense is shipping a Linux-ready, robot-targeted "MBS270-520" single-board computer (SBC) that can control small robots such as Tomy's i-Sobot. The 6.5-inch-tall i-Sobot has been dubbed "the smallest humanoid robot in production" by Guinness World Records, says Tomy."


• My latest project: OpenBSD on the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 (Nov 24, 2008, 13:33)
  Click: "I'm getting ready to give the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) to our daughter to run her educational games (Childsplay, Gcompris, TuxPaint) on Ubuntu Hardy... To replace that machine for me, I pulled a Toshiba Satellite 1101-S101 laptop from the boneyard."


• Linux Has Been Tick Boxed (Nov 24, 2008, 13:03)
  IP Pro: "...MSI has had a lot more netbooks returned with Linux installed, than Windows. What is interesting is that there is a recent report that Asus has found no skew in the number of returns in either way. Very interesting indeed - so what does this say?"


• OpenLDAP Quick Tips: Get Your Own Private Enterprise Number for LDAP Schemas (Nov 24, 2008, 12:03)
  Suretec: "The golden rule: Under no circumstances should you hijack name space belonging to others!"


• Another Simple Scriptlet To Make The Unix And Linux CLI More User Friendly (Nov 24, 2008, 10:03)
  The Linux and Unix Menagerie: "Today we're going to shoot out another quick scriptlet that might be useful (or distracting ;) from time to time. It's a bit of a follow up on our post from earlier this week on using bash to produce fancy user names for folks logged into your machine, although it's a little bit longer. Once again, if you go by the 65 character rule, this isn't a one liner, even though it's all going on one line ;)"
  Link fixed--ed.


• PhoneReminder 1.0, Appointment Reminder Software for OpenEMR, Released (Nov 24, 2008, 08:03)
  LinuxMedNews: "OpenEMR HQ, a small software startup in NE Oklahoma, announced the release of PhoneReminder for OpenEMR. PhoneReminder is add-in software to the OpenEMR medical records package that allows users to automatically notify patients by phone (voice or text message) of upcoming appointments."


• Common GCC 4.4 Build Problems (Nov 24, 2008, 06:03)
  Journal of Martin Michlmayr: "Martin Michlmayr built the Debian archive with a snapshot of the upcoming GCC 4.4 and described common build failures: some failures are caused by stricter preprocessor checks in GCC 4.4 and many by missing #include statements."


• LIFE Photo Archive Available on Google Image Search (Nov 24, 2008, 04:03)
  Google Blog: "The Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination; The Mansell Collection from London; Dahlstrom glass plates of New York and environs from the 1880s; and the entire works left to the collection from LIFE photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili, and Nina Leen. These are just some of the things you'll see in Google Image Search today."


• No More Microsoft Internet Explorer for the 2010 Soccer World Cup (Nov 24, 2008, 02:03)
  dwayne's blog: "If you are planning to be at the soccer world cup in 2010, planning to deliver your web content to a 2010 audience, then these trends are very important. They influence what technology decisions you need to make today to deliver to your 2010 audience."


• The Perfect Desktop - Ubuntu Studio 8.10 (Nov 24, 2008, 00:02)
  HowtoForge: "This tutorial shows how you can set up an Ubuntu Studio 8.10 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge."