Linux News for Mar 31, 2010

• Why have an Iphone if you can have a Bphone? Linux, rotating screen, Cool (Mar 31, 2010, 23:33)
  Handle With Linux: "available from chinagrabber.com this is the Bphone, a hybrid netbook/cellphone which features a rotating touch screen and a keyboard, beat that apple:"


• The importance of Document Freedom Day explained by Microsoft (Mar 31, 2010, 23:03)
  Stop: "These are only a few of the many resources that you can use to understand how important DFD is for you, even if, personally, you don't care at all about computers. The rest of this page, instead, explains how even a job offer from one of the greatest enemies of Document Freedom, Microsoft, proves the same point."


• Intel's Nehalem-EX Targets Mainframe, RISC Systems (Mar 31, 2010, 22:33)
  Hardware Central: "Intel is targeting the mainframe and RISC systems market with its new Xeon 6500/7500 lines of server processors that offer many features normally reserved for those high end systems."


• An Easy and Inexpensive Quad-Core System for Debian or Ubuntu GNU/Linux (Mar 31, 2010, 22:03)
  Free Software Magazine: "My son’s hand-me-down motherboard recently gave up the ghost, and I decided that was a good excuse for an upgrade. Shopping around, I found that multi-core CPUs were finally in my price range, so I decided to build him a quad-core system."


• Linux / UNIX: Encrypt Backup Tape Using Tar & OpenSSL (Mar 31, 2010, 21:33)
  Cyberciti: "How do I make sure only authorized person access my backups stored on the tape drives (DAT, DLT, LTO-4 etc) under Linux or UNIX operating systems? How do I backup /array22/vol4/home/ to /dev/rmt/5mn or /dev/st0 in encrypted mode?"


• NVIDIA Drops Xf86-video-nv Support: No Open Source for New Cards (Mar 31, 2010, 21:03)
  Linux Pro Magazine: "Andy Ritger, NVIDIA manager responsible for the Linux graphics cards, as announced on the X.org mailing list that the graphics chip company will no longer develop the open source 2D video drivers for its chips. He recommends using the VESA X driver instead."


• Coming Soon: X Server 1.8 (Mar 31, 2010, 20:33)
  Phoronix: "According to the release plans, the release of X Server 1.8 should take place, and while in reality it will likely not be released today, its release is coming soon. When this release does arrive, it will add a new set of features to the X.Org stack and a number of other minor improvements and bug-fixes."


• For Real XO Laptop Impact, We Need Infrastructure (Mar 31, 2010, 20:03)
  OLPC news: "I was in the Peace Corps in Cape Verde as an ICT volunteer from 2006 to 2008, and while I was there, the One Laptop Per Child project came on my radar and I became pretty enamored of the prospect of bringing some XOs to the country, or at least raising awareness of the idea within the government."


• Secure Your Server with Denyhosts (Mar 31, 2010, 19:33)
  Geekride: "DenyHosts is a tool i use to secure my SSH server from these type of people. Written in python, this tool serves as a very active security guard and helps me to keep my system safe from lots of prying eyes."


• Linux and Small Business: The Ongoing Disconnect (Mar 31, 2010, 19:03)
  The VAR Guy: "While Red Hat, Novell, Canonical and other Linux distribution providers continue to gain momentum, most of the Linux chatter has very little to do with small business success. Consider the facts:"


• Mozilla Updates Firefox for Security, Ends 3.0.x Branch (Mar 31, 2010, 18:33)
  Datamation: "Mozilla is out this week with Firefox 3.5.9 and 3.0.19 updates, fixing multiple security vulnerabilities in the open source Web browser's two branches, while announcing that the older of the two branches is being phased out."


• Groklaw: How One Person Can Do Big Deeds. Thanks PJ. (Mar 31, 2010, 18:03)
  Linux Today Blog: "The endless SCO saga is finally at an end, and justice has prevailed. But without Groklaw, would it have ended differently? "


• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 Released; RHEL 6 Coming Soon (Mar 31, 2010, 17:33)
  Serverwatch: "Red Hat is updating its flagship Linux server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to version 5.5 providing performance and feature improvements."


• SCO, Novell: Grokking Where Credit is Due (Mar 31, 2010, 17:03)
  IT World: "The next thing that ruined SCO's plans? Groklaw."


• NexentaStor Community Edition Released (Mar 31, 2010, 16:33)
  NexentaStor: The NexentaStor project has released Community edition v3.0 of it's free storage appliance. The distribution is based on the Nexenta Core Platform - OpenSolaris kernel combined with Ubuntu userland.


• Linux on Netbooks Reloads With Ubuntu-based Jolicloud (Mar 31, 2010, 16:03)
  Linux Planet: "Linux was a resounding failure on netbooks, so what makes this French start-up firm think it can succeed with an Ubuntu Linux derivative?"


• Zotac MAG HD-ND01 Nettop review (Mar 31, 2010, 15:33)
  Linux User and Developer: "Like some of the alternative nettop computers we've reviewed over the past new months, the Zotac MAG can also attach to the VESA mount on the back of most monitors, meaning it takes up literally zero desk space."


• 8 of the Best Free Linux Astrology Software (Mar 31, 2010, 15:03)
  Linux Links: "To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 8 top quality open source astrology applications. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone interested in intuitive perception."


• Novell Wins! SCO Loses! (Mar 31, 2010, 14:33)
  Computerworld: "Yes, it's true. After just more than 7-years of SCO lawsuits, SCO has lost its last real chance of causing Linux and the companies that support it-IBM; Novell, and Red Hat--any real trouble."


• Pass-It-On Awards Program (Mar 31, 2010, 14:03)
  Anita Borg Institute: "The Anita Borg Systers Pass-It-On (PIO) Awards honor Anita Borg’s desire to create a network of technical women helping one another."


• The GPLv3 in Plain English – The Parts Microsoft Worries About (Mar 31, 2010, 13:33)
  fsckin w/ linux: " Awhile back I read the small print about Microsoft’s Moonlight software distribution. It specifically mentions the stuff they don’t like about the GPLv3. Interesting. Let’s see what they are worried about."


• The Large Hadron Collider switches on- the end of the world will be powered by GNU/Linux (Mar 31, 2010, 13:03)
  Free Software Magazine: "The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is up and running as I write and as far as I can tell I’m still here, so it looks like the doomsayers were a little premature. Unless I’m writing this piece from the far side of the singularity of a black hole in a parallel universe."


• Easy Samba Setup (Mar 31, 2010, 12:33)
  Linux.com: "This time around I'll focus more on Samba and how it is installed and configured to allow for the sharing of files and folders. For this article, we will look at the smb.conf configuration file and how it is set up and how to create new shares and even share printers."


• Groklaw: How One Person Can Do Big Deeds. Thanks PJ. (Mar 31, 2010, 12:22)
  The endless SCO saga is finally at an end, and justice has prevailed. But without Groklaw, would it have ended differently?

  Let me rephrase that: it will probably continue to sputter and emit random gases, because the nice SCO leadership and their backers are masters of weaving grand propositions out of fantasy, and perpetuating their fantasies in the seemingly non-functional US civil courts system. But for all non-Bizarro world purposes it is over. The SCO vs. Novell verdict settles the key question of who owns the Unix copyrights. Answer: not SCO. I know, it's a little more complex than that because there are several Unix variants. But as far as SCO's silly claims against Linux, it is definitively over.

  Those of us who followed this loony saga from the beginning are wondering: What would have happened if Pamela Jones and Groklaw had not taken an interest in this case? Would there have been any semblance of truth anywhere? I think not.



• User management with SSSD on shared Ubuntu Lucid laptops (Mar 31, 2010, 12:03)
  opinsys: "A few months ago we had a blog entry about shared and personal laptops in schools. The goal of shared laptops is basically that they should behave mostly like shared thin clients: it should not matter which a computer any user chooses to work with."


• Oracle's Linux Server Slant (Mar 31, 2010, 11:03)
  Serverwatch: "Based on Oracle's recent actions, it seems the company is hell-bent on driving as many of its potential customers as possible away from the UNIX offerings it acquired from Sun and into the arms of Red Hat and other enterprise Linux vendors."


• What's your school project? An alternative to Microsoft Windows! (Mar 31, 2010, 09:03)
  Stop: "Andrea and Stefano chose this project to prove what Free Software can do for education and to fight an unpleasant, but unfortunately very common situation in italian schools and Universities."


• Go Ahead, Play with Your Food (Mar 31, 2010, 07:03)
  The Tyee: "It's an unusual Friday night at Grinder, a small coffee shop in Toronto. There's an alien in someone's cup, hearts in another and someone else sees their face in their mug."


• Using smartctl to get SMART status information on your hard drives (Mar 31, 2010, 05:03)
  Tech Republic: "Vincent Danen has some tips for using the smartmontools package to obtain important information about the health of your hard drives that could provide early warning signs of problems."


• PHP blunders with random numbers (Mar 31, 2010, 03:03)
  The H Open: "Security expert Andreas Bogk warns that, despite recent PHP improvements, the session IDs of users who are logged into PHP applications remain guessable. Upon close examination, the alleged improvements display frightening weaknesses."


• A Sys Admin's Guide to the Server OS of Your Dreams (Mar 31, 2010, 01:33)
  Serverwatch: "If you were to design your dream enterprise server OS from scratch, what would it be like?"


• Italian Court OKs Preference for Open Source (Mar 31, 2010, 00:03)
  Open...: "Here's a big win for open source: the Italian Constitutional Court has approved a law in Piedmont giving preference to open source, ruling that it is not anti-competitive:"