Linux News for May 20, 2009

• Disk Encryption With TrueCrypt (May 20, 2009, 23:32)
  Tip of the Trade: "Continuing on last week's coverage of computer security, TrueCrypt is open source disk encryption software for Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. There are Linux binaries available for OpenSuSE (.rpm) and Ubuntu (.deb); otherwise you can install from source."


• 8 Great Linux Apps Worth Bragging About, part 1 (May 20, 2009, 23:02)
  LinuxPlanet: "There is such a wealth of great Free and Open Source software applications it's almost an embarrassment of riches, and we're going to look at 8 of them in this two-part series."


• The new face of open source on Wall Street (May 20, 2009, 22:32)
  The Open Road: "Cost may be a primary driver for the shift to open source, but as the managing director of Technology Risk Management at Bank of New York Mellon told me, open-source software has become the innovation platform of choice for financial services companies."


• ASEAN Free Software Wishlist (May 20, 2009, 22:02)
  Brendan Scott's Weblog: "But, so far as I am aware no one actually is throwing money around. Which is disappointing, given that the Australian government donates $100 million a year to the copyright lobby and even more to the closed source lobby."


• Newham and the Prisoner's Dilemma (May 20, 2009, 21:32)
  open Enterprise: "First the bad. Newham demonstrates that once Microsoft products are used for a large number of functions in a large organisation, there is a natural tendency to use even more of them because of the way that Microsoft links and binds them together."


• The Future Of Gnome DE Looks Promising (May 20, 2009, 21:02)
  GeekTechnica: "One thing we have learned from KDE4 is that its not a good idea to make drastic change to a desktop environment that the users have been used to for a long time."


• Cisco makes peace with Free Software Foundation (May 20, 2009, 20:32)
  Cyber Cynic: "Last December, the Free Software Foundation sued Cisco for copyright infringement. Some people saw this battle being like a moth tackling a light-bulb-a total no win situation for the moth. But, a few months later, what do we find? Cisco is making friends with the free software instead of burning it to a crisp. "


• Xen 3.4.0 released (May 20, 2009, 20:02)
  Xen community blog: "The new release, Xen 3.4, furthers the vision of creating a powerful, efficient, and ubiquitous virtualization hypervisor. As part of the Xen community's commitment to continuous improvement, the new hypervisor offers significant enhancements in the following areas:"


• Many Sun Products to Wither and Die (May 20, 2009, 19:32)
  CIO Update: "With slumping budgets, declining server market, and a moribund Sun, Oracle will be hard-pressed to make the hardware side of this deal a strong success."


• Musix2.0-DVD-beta1 released (May 20, 2009, 19:02)
  Musix: "We have released a new version of the 100% free operating system for musicians, graphic designers, video makers, artists and all kinds of users. Musix 2.0 beta1 Live DVD can be tested on your PC without installing anything on your hard disk, then if you wish, you can install it."


• Secret code and the damage it does to our society (May 20, 2009, 18:02)
  Computerworld UK: "However things have moved on and secret code is becoming a threat to our civil liberties and to the development of IT in general."


• New gnome.org - Need writers & editors! (May 20, 2009, 17:32)
  Gnome: "The content was last updated in early 2007. This team (which I helped with at the time) was headed up by Quim Gil, and I've volunteered to Lucas to help lead it this time around. Quim and his team finalized the sitemap, including which pages should be included, and a first draft of the content for those pages."


• If Oracle commits to Solaris, will IBM buy Red Hat? (May 20, 2009, 17:02)
  The Open Road: "Katherine Egbert has predicted (again) that Red Hat will be bought, this time by IBM. While I have indulged my own Red Hat acquisition fantasies in the past, I just can't see a near-term acquisition of Red Hat by IBM. Unless...."


• How Old is that Data on the Hard Drive? (May 20, 2009, 16:32)
  Linux Magazine: "The vast of amount of data being stored in this day and age, naturally leads to files sitting unused for longer and longer periods of time. A new app, agedu, can quickly tell you what data on your filesystem is lying fallow."


• Intel reveals new OS for netbooks (May 20, 2009, 16:02)
  TechWorld: "Intel has announced a beta version of a Linux OS for netbooks, one that it hopes will end the dominance of Windows on the low-cost devices."


• Why are you not running Apache? New IIS holes should make you rethink your web server (May 20, 2009, 15:32)
  Linux Journal: "What got me thinking about Apache was partially nostalgia and partially head banging and continued frustration with government use of IIS, especially given the exciting events this week."


• The KDE 4.3 beta: KDE Returns to Incremental Releases (May 20, 2009, 15:04)
  Datamation: "Now, with the release of the KDE 4.3 beta, the project is returning to incremental releases, and concentrating on customization and ease of use on the desktop, the panel, and system settings."


• Acer Tells Kid's Charity - Pay Up or Shut Up (May 20, 2009, 14:19)
  Blog of Helios: "What I ran into was something that I have ranted about in the past to the point where I almost bored myself. Trusted Computing."


• Desktop Linux: it ain't a better Windows (May 20, 2009, 13:33)
  IT Wire: "One debate which the FOSS community will never give up on is the one about GNU/Linux on the desktop. No matter that the two big companies which were once interested in putting GNU/Linux on the desktop have now officially given up."


• Digital and Analog Circuit Simulation with Ksimus (May 20, 2009, 13:03)
  Linux Journal: "At the risk of waxing nostalgic, I remember what it was like to build circuits in school. We'd spend hours the night before the lab designing our circuit, being careful to list each interconnection. We had to keep track of which pin numbers on each chip were to be connected. Then, we took our design and our box of parts to the lab."


• The best Linux disk cloning software - Mephisto Backup v1.5 (May 20, 2009, 12:33)
  Berkeley Linux Users Group: "The key feature of this program is the ability to backup your system to an image and copy it to a Linux Live DVD for future restoration. The user can then take that cd and move his or her system to any PC."


• How inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism work in C++ (May 20, 2009, 12:03)
  Alex Linux: "In this article, I would like to give you a short insight into what's going on behind the scenes. In particular we'll see how the three whales of OOP work in C++."


• The RIAA Has Got to Stop (May 20, 2009, 10:33)
  PC Magazine: "I ask this simple question: If there's a band out there whose CD I would buy, how am I supposed to discover this band? Tell me how! Is Rush Limbaugh going to play them?"


• Joining a Windows 7 system to a Samba domain (May 20, 2009, 09:03)
  GGTSdotNET: "Turns out you have to add two reg keys as well. Since it took me a fair bit of search to find this, I thought I'd document the required changes here, if for no other reason to save myself the trouble when I went to do it again..."


• The Moblin V2 User Interface Is Very Impressive (May 20, 2009, 07:33)
  Phoronix: "While Moblin 2.0 final is not yet released, there is now more to get excited over than just amazing boot times. Moblin 2.0 will introduce a Clutter-based user interface and from our initial encounters with this release, it is very impressive! In this article we have more information on this new UI along with screenshots and videos."


• Using PHP directly from the command line on Linux and UNIX (May 20, 2009, 06:03)
  IBM Developerworks: "Learn how to better integrate scripts with command-line tools. Examine using shell_exec(), exec(), passthru(), and system(); safely passing information to the command line; and safely retrieving information from it."


• Microsoft now all about cooperation? Yes, thanks to patents (May 20, 2009, 04:33)
  ars Technica: "Far from being the evil monopolist, Microsoft has in many ways become the cooperative giant--and it's all thanks to intellectual property. The company's IP czar takes us inside the corporate transformation in a new book, Burning the Ships, to show us how it happened (and to take a few potshots at Richard Stallman)."


• Interop: The Dark Side of the Cloud, security and lock-in (May 20, 2009, 03:03)
  Netstat -vat: "The cloud, that great idea that could save IT, lower costs and speeds everything up has a dark side. According to a panel at Interop's Enterprise Cloud Summit, the dark side is something to be aware off and isn't necessarily a barrier to adoption."


• Officeshots.org available in closed beta (May 20, 2009, 01:33)
  LXer: "The Netherlands in Open Connection and OpenDoc Society are happy to announce the immediate availability of the beta of Officeshots.org, a free webservice that allows users to compare the output quality of office applications. The Officeshots project entails both an open source service framework, and a free online service based on this framework"


• How To Install Arch Linux Via FTP (May 20, 2009, 00:03)
  Raiden's Realm: "When you get to the point that you understand Linux, that flexibility is great. For the Linux newbie however, the myriad of choices and options are overwhelming. This guide will help you install what I think is the best Arch Linux personal desktop solution for a beginner to Linux."