alll about linux

Gentoo Linux has released its first update of 2006, continuing the evolution of the meta-distribution, adding new software versions and improving support for PowerPC architectures.

It also offers what Gentoo developers are claiming to be the first distribution with compile time optimization for the POWER5 processor. That support comes partially thanks to an IBM donation to Gentoo.

Gentoo 2006.0 includes the latest stable Linux kernel 2.6.15 as well as GNOME 2.12.2 and KDE 3.4.3 on the desktop. 2006.0 serves as an update to the installation media of the last milestone release 2005.1 which came out last August.

The new milestone release also include the official debut of Gentoo’s Linux installer which is initially being included with the x86 version. >>>>

Related: Gentoo Has an Installer now
“This installer is great but it still needs development.”

“Linux in the workplace is no more difficult to learn than switching skills from an Apple computer to a Windows machine,” said Edward Corrado, leader of the Princeton, New Jersey, Linux User Group. “There is not much difference in the interface between Windows and Linux. For a new user, Linux is just as easy, if not easier.”

 ”Linux will get a greater share of the corporate user base and more government agencies and schools,” he said. “We are already starting to see migration to Linux on college campuses.”

Looking to the future, it might be only a matter of time before more and more converts give Linux stellar marks.

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“Linux in the workplace is no more difficult to learn than switching skills from an Apple computer to a Windows machine,” said Edward Corrado, leader of the Princeton, New Jersey, Linux User Group. “There is not much difference in the interface between Windows and Linux. For a new user, Linux is just as easy, if not easier.”

 ”Linux will get a greater share of the corporate user base and more government agencies and schools,” he said. “We are already starting to see migration to Linux on college campuses.”

Looking to the future, it might be only a matter of time before more and more converts give Linux stellar marks.

Full Article

If you’re a Mac OS X user who needs to move files securely between home, work, and Web hosts, try Fugu, an open source, graphical front end for SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), Secure Copy (SCP), and Secure Shell (SSH). Fugu uses these three protocols to conduct secure transfers and other communication between computers.

Fugu’s graphical user interface is simple enough for beginners to use comfortably, yet it supports more advanced capabilities that experienced SFTP/SCP/SSH users may need. The most visible parts of the program concern secure file transfers between Mac OS X and a remote server, though it also supports more esoteric functions such as tunneling.

Fugu is freely available under an open source license. The application is available as a universal binary, which means that it runs on both the PowerPC and Intel-based architectures

An advantage to free software is that it is an environment where competition can thrive, choice is always available and different solutions exist for the same problem. However, it’s also fair to say that free software is disadvantaged where competition breeds, choices are forced on unsuspecting users and diverse technologies fight each other.

Examples of this are GNOME vs KDE, PostgreSQL vs MySQL, VI vs EMACS, and even GNU/Linux vs the BSDs. On the face of it, another flame war seems to be looming, in this case in the domain of the accelerated desktop, that is one of SuSE’s XGL vs RedHat’s AIGLX. Various commentators and observers have caught onto this and there are hints at the beginnings of a press feeding frenzy here. However, upon closer inspection of these technologies, I have discovered that they are not quite as confrontational as it would first appear.

To explain, I need to go into the background of the current (or old as it may be now) relationship between the X Windows System and accelerated 3D graphics.

The Story So Far ….  Complete Article

“… 100 of the most popular extensions at the same time …”

In this tutorial we are going to improve our website by tweaking out the .htaccess file. Why I wrote this article? Because on the net I have found many articles about this little beast, but every one of them dealt with a specific issue and not look at the overall usage of these files, or they are just too big when you need to do a thing in little time. So I’m trying to collect all the useful bits of data in a monolithic but slim tutorial, which will be updated as I collect more information. But first, let’s see what .htaccess file is…

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Today the same cultural phenomenon seems to have been applied to the much revered Content Management System (CMS). For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last five years, the humble CMS provides a website engine that can be used to create a site without the need to wrap yourself up with HTML, CSS, scripting languages and small paper napkins with strange CSS workarounds scribed upon them.

From early successes such as PHPNuke, CMSs have grown dramatically. A quick look at the CMS Matrix provides a head count of 527 CMSs at the time of writing. Yes, 527. Insane.

That Story

System administration can be like sailing a ship. You must keep your engines running smoothly, keep your crew and the harbors notified and up to date and also maintain your Captain’s log. You must keep your eye on the horizon for what is coming next. Two technologies have emerged over the past few years that could help keep you on course, wikis and blogs. This tutorial on TWiki and WordPress shows how wikis and blogs can be useful for system administration and documentation.

And That Story

-srlinuxx

Again, though not related to the theme of this blog, but the following article takes a look at the future platform that most of us will likely end up using our Linux or other OSS/FSF applications, as I am one of them for sure.

“The anticipation surrounding AMD’s upcoming Socket AM2 platform is amazing to witness. On the one hand, there is hardly a secret about it that had not been discovered months ahead of the product launch, so there is discussion of it all over the place. On the other hand, the enthusiast crowds are eager for the new platform, which will be associated with important changes in the PC world; these include the introduction of Microsoft’s Vista operating system and AMD’s first quad core processors. However, AM2 has not been about being better or faster until lately.”

Full Review

An excellent article from FSM on X.

Any home or client system software provider, free or otherwise, that wants to be taken seriously has to provide a graphical user interface (GUI) as their prime method of user interaction. Microsoft include theirs as part of the main system, or kernel, as do many other system providers. Most GNU/Linux distributions include it in the default install. However, with GNU/Linux and other POSIX operating systems, the GUI infrastructure is not part of the kernel but a separate program with the mystical name of “The X Window System?. It calls itself “X11 Release 6? and everyone else simply knows it as “X?. There’s a lot more to this X than meets the eye, it has attributes and powers that are not well known and can do things that other windowing systems cannot. What is this X? What amazing super-GUI powers does it have? This article attempts to tear off its mask and reveal all.

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Microsoft lately has been challenging Linux’s suitability for older hardware, so it seems like a good time to look at Linux distributions that can run on older machines. I took six distributions for a test run on an old machine, and also tried software that turns old hardware into a thin client. The bottom line: Linux is still quite suitable for older hardware. It might not turn your aging PC into a powerhouse, but it will extend its lifespan considerably.

For these tests, I dug out Igor, an old PC that had been collecting dust in my closet. Igor is a Pentium II 233MHz machine with 64MB of RAM, an 8x CD-ROM drive, a 3GB hard drive, and an integrated ATI 3D Rage Pro video card with 4MB of video RAM. You can run Linux on older and slower machines, but this is the most under-powered machine I had available. >>>>