2004 August

Open source is a viable and cost-effective option for business, and mass adoption will occur, delegates at the second Open Source Software Africa Conference were told yesterday.

Here’s a tool that’s supposed to take the uncertainty out of choosing a Linux distro. It’s appropriately called the Linux Distribution Chooser. The interface is simply point and click and after a series of questions just about five or so it recommends a distro. I took the distro chooser for a spin and after indicating [...]

AUGUST 30, 2004 (LINUXWORLD) - More details have been released regarding the U.S. Department of Defense’s choice of Linux-based supercomputers to power complicated battle scenarios.

Sensing increased opportunity in India, Red Hat India, the leading Linux applications and open source provider, is doubling its headcount in the country to 100 in the next 12-18 months.

SLAX 4.1.4
“SLAX 4.1.4, the 180MB live CD with KDE 3.3, was released today! It features a lot of bugfixes and news, for example: added Linux kernel 2.4.28-pre2 with SATA (libsata) support compiled in; added KDE 3.3.0, K3B 0.11.14; added cheatcodes.txt to CD’s root directory; added MPlayer 1.0-pre5, recompiled with many options; fixed GUI script to [...]

I was once a big fan of Corel WordPerfect, and very much preferred it over Microsoft Word. In fact, before I discovered the glory that is OpenOffice.org, the availability of WordPerfect for Linux was one of the selling points for me in evaluating Linux on the desktop.

“Critical: Moderately critical Impact: System access Where: From remote Solution Status: Unpatched infamous41md has reported multiple vulnerabilities in xv, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user’s system.
The vulnerabilities are caused due to boundary errors within the processing of images and can be exploited to cause buffer [...]

“Critical: Less critical Impact: Hijacking Where: From remote Solution Status: Vendor Patch Software: KDE 3.x Konqueror 3.x. WESTPOINT has discovered a vulnerability in Konqueror, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to conduct session fixation attacks.
The problem is that websites are allowed to set cookies for certain country-specific secondary [...]

“Critical: Less critical Impact: System access Where: From remote
Solution Status: Vendor Patch. A vulnerability has been reported in Courier-IMAP (also included in Courier Mail Server), which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a vulnerable system.
The vulnerability is caused due to a format string error within the “auth_debug()” function used [...]

“In recent years, open-source alternatives to Office have matured to the point where IT managers are beginning to investigate the viability of moving from the Microsoft Corp. suite to a license-free alternative. So when eWEEK Corporate Partner Ed Benincasa shared his desire to perform a user-based comparison between the OpenOffice.org project’s OpenOffice.org suite and Microsoft’s Office 2003, [...]

Conectiva Live Snapshot 20040828
“We are proud to announce the first ‘clive’ snapshot, our development branch of Conectiva Linux, in live CD. Starring in this release: full final KDE 3.3, kernel 2.6.9-rc1, NVIDIA native drivers. Our representatives at aKademy, Helio and Boiko, are already showing this live CD with full KDE 3.3 installation. Now we have [...]

When small companies announce they’re putting Linux OS on a computer it makes news. When they announce they’re putting it on a laptop it’s even bigger news. Now you’re beginning to realize how big a deal it was when computer giant Hewlett-Packard announced they were selling a laptop with Linux inside.

Oops:
“In all the hustle dealing with releasing 0.82 I completely neglected to acknowledge the discoverer of some of the recent Gaim security holes. I’d like to thank Sean (”infamous42md”) for taking the time to find the problems and tell us about them.”

Kyle Rankin does a quick article as to what is new in Knoppix 3.6. If your sitting there debating if you should download it and upgrade to 3.6 than this article will help you make the decision. I personally upgrade with each and every Knoppix and I am very happy with the 3.6 [...]

From eBCVG, “Organizations today are struggling with how to expand their business and compete in the face of lean IT budgets. Doing more with fewer resources, optimizing systems and revitalizing IT infrastructures for greater efficiency and agility to respond to ever- changing business conditions remain at the top of many business leaders’ agendas.”

On Saturday, August 28, it is possible a new holiday will be born: Software Freedom Day. Organized by grassroots groups, the worldwide event is an effort to promote wider use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

It’s not very often we get to post anything related to the National Security Agency. There’s a good reason for that. They don’t exactly encourage open discussions of their practices. And this has to be the first time I’ve ever used the terms Open Source and the N.S.A. is the same sentence. [...]

So. You’ve got your 1 Gigabyte Gmail account. But who really gets that much emaill? Wouldn’t it be nice to use it for something useful, like remote file storage?

If you’re a geek who loves geek-speak, I’ve got just the thing for you. On the other hand, if you’re simply curious about Andrew Morton and wonder what the man who maintains the Linux kernel is thinking…well, I’ve got something for you, too.

Dave Fancella gets philosophical about the impact of the free software movement on the shareware industry in his NewsForge article.