2004 June

The SCO Group has made it known that they have every intention of suing individual Linux users if they refuse to pay the company an enormous $700 licensing fee. Now if that is not bad enough, it is reported that they are considering doubling this fee come fall.
It is important to realize that to [...]

A church decides to use Linux on 19 donated machines instead of Windows. While they explain that cost was certainly a component of the reasoning, choice also played a large part in the final decision. Since some of the computers needed to be refurbished before use, the logic to to move to Linux seemed like [...]

The German government unveiled it’s very own Linux Desktop OS. Bundled with only free software, it was first shown at LinuxTag 2004 for all to see. The idea is part of a program designed to evaluate Open Source Software within government environments. Based on Debian Stable, the distro is available as a Live CD in [...]

DreamWorks, the animation company that created Shrek 2 have Linux to thank for it’s part in the movies creation. There were over 330 Hewlett Packard workstations running Linux being manned by the Shrek 2 digital artists. The OS of choice was in fact Red Hat Linux 7.2 complemented by dual-Intel Xeon 2.4GHz processors and a [...]

The powers that be for Sun Microsystems believe that people are considering Red Hat Linux for all of the wrong reasons. With this in mind, they are positioning themselves to take them on head to head. Sun will be using Solaris as it’s “weapon of choice” in the battle for the Red Hat market place. [...]

LiveCD distros like Knoppix are now supporting Wi-Fi cards like the Linksys WPC55AG PC Card. In days past, getting wireless internet to work with Linux has proved to be a bit of a challenge for the Linux newbie. Thankfully, Gary Rennie’s article helps to clear up the process a bit. If you have the right [...]

RealNetworks has announced that Novell and Red Hat will be shipping the open-source Helix media player with their Linux distributions. It is believed that this might begin to mend some of the hatred Real has received over the years for hijacking file associations, forced registrations and other annoying facets of their flagship client. While this [...]

Skype Technologies has announced that they have released their P2P Telephony client for Linux. As with the Windows version, it works pretty well on both dial up and broadband connections. As with it’s Windows counterpart, Skype is voice only with no plans on adding video. Skype works perfectly behind firewalls and NAT enabled routers as [...]

The new Mandrakelinux 10.0 is now available folks! New features include:
- Kernel 2.6
- KDE 3.2
- Authentication on LDAP, NIS or Windows® servers
- Authentication on LDAP, NIS or Windows® servers
Mandrakelinux 10.0 also includes all of the other features you come to expect like:
- Intuitive wizards and configuration utilities
- NTFS partition resizing without data loss
- Support for [...]

Linux, the final frontier. While never at any point in the history of the operating system have things been so red hot, Windows still has been able to “one up” the Linux desktop in a few key areas.
1) Plug it in and it simply works. When using Windows XP, this is a common theme. Even [...]

An amusing tale (actually it is a review of Lindows) of a man ready to upgrade his laptop computer from his old 90MHz Pentium to something a little “meatier”. As a Linux lover, Windows was not an option for this true believer. After much thought he settles on Lindows and the then fun begins. While [...]

Latest Releases from DistroWatch
tinysofa enterprise server 2.0-pre1
“tinysofa enterprise server 2.0-pre1 (Persistence) technology preview is now available. The 2.0 branch builds upon the components of Fedora Core with ideas and inspiration from SUSE, Conectiva and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It features APT as an advanced package management tool, secure defaults and services, a turn key ASP.NET server [...]

Several months back, a federal agency released software under the GPL and there was absolutely no fan fair about it at all. Is the software released by a government really public? Regardless, the fact that open source has made this incredible leap into the bowels of the United States government is an amazing thing regardless [...]

Amy Fowler of Sun’s JDesktop Network Components team, talks about how the potential for the JDNC API is huge. The goal is to make it easier for developers to build rich Java clients. Amy also made it very clear that she is really targeting developers that may not be “Swing literate”.
Amy offers up an [...]

An excellent interview with the Project Leader for the Debian Linux distribution. In this interview, they discuss the past and present of Debian. How they have changed Linux forever with the concept of Debian’s package system. The feeling of control the package system allows for it’s users with a simple method of software installation. As [...]

You have heard of Knoppix, one of the world’s most popular live Linux CDs. But have you heard of Bayanihan Linux? Designed with home users and students in mind, Bayanihan includes word processing and graphic editing software already bundled with the distro. Much like Knoppix, Bayanihan runs off of a live CD so that it [...]

Red Hat users stuck on dial-up connections are probably already familiar with this problem: every time KPPP is brought up to dial, it asks for the root password. This is all well and good if you’re the only user on your machine and don’t mind typing in a complex password before every ‘Net session (and [...]

DNS otherwise know as the Domain Name System, is an important part of almost any network application. Interested in learning the basic mechanics of how DNS works, how DoS attacks take place, the inside scoop on buffer overflows and even Cache Poisoning? Then you will want to read the following article. Keeping multiple DNS roles [...]

Chris DiBona discusses email security, or should I say a lack there of? He explains how you may think to make sure that sensitive web page traffic is only routed through secure web pages, the same is not likely said for most people sending sensitive email. He goes on to explain how if you use [...]

Linux enthusiasts claim that the Linux security model is flawless. However, the skeptics are frankly a little leery. In an article from Linux Exposed, the writer of this article examines that nuts and bolts of a Linux exploit. As you follow along, you find that he walks you through each step and explains common mistakes [...]