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NewsVac: News from around the Web
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Vendors boost open source tools support
1 year, 4 months ago
At the OSCON show, Black Duck and Intel are offering better ways for open source developers to accelerate software development and improve their parallel processing capabilities. -
Linux Test Project June 2008 release announcement
1 year, 4 months ago
The Linux Test Project test suite has been released for the month of June 2008. The latest version of the test-suite contains 3000+ tests for the Linux OS and can be found at ltp.sourceforge.net. -
dwm 4.9 Released
1 year, 7 months ago
"dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled and floating layouts. Either layout can be applied dynamically, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed. It is the little brother of wmii." And version 4.9 has been released. -
Setting up Subversion and Trac as virtual hosts on an Ubuntu server
1 year, 10 months ago
This howto outlines the process by which one can set up the Subversion version control system, and have it work in tandem with Trac, the project manager for software development projects, on a server running Ubuntu (or possibly Debian). -
Mozilla introduces new Weave online service
1 year, 11 months ago
"Mozilla Labs launched a new online service called Weave yesterday. The idea behind Weave is that all your personal information such as bookmarks, passwords and are synced to your Mozilla account via Firefox .... " -
Canonical releases version 1.0 of 'Bazaar' version control tool
1 year, 11 months ago
Open-source projects often face the problem of keeping track of a project's code, while avoiding stifling developers' creativity. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, claims it has a solution to that problem: Bazaar 1.0, its new version control system. Unlike most VCSs (version control systems), Bazaar is a distributed, rather than centralized, system. -
Disk based backups with Amanda on Debian Etch
2 years, 2 months ago
"This document describes how to set up Amanda (The Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver) on Debian Etch ... The resulting system provides a flexible backup system with many features. It will be able to back up multiple hosts via network to various devices. I chose the disk based backup for this howto .... " -
Central Log Management System
2 years, 2 months ago
"Central Log Management System is a simple web based logging system which allows logging all syslog messages from various Network Devices, Unix, Linux, Solaris and Windows Servers. This allows the visibility of logs from all these devices in one single interface ...." -
BugnuX 2007 released
2 years, 2 months ago
"The BugnuX team is proud to release the final version of BugnuX 2007, after many sleepless/partyless nights. The key features of this version are that the default Window Manager is Enlighenment 0.17. Yes, E17 is still in beta, but it has some very nifty features. Since it is in beta, we have also included the latest stable version of Fluxbox, as an alternative, just in case...The other important feature is that we have our own repository (fully compatible with PCLinuxOS 2007) with all the testing tools(marathon, jacareto, CurlLoader), E17, OPenBox, FluxBox, Rox, idesk, etc. .... '
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Entering a safe mirror when logging in with unionfs and chroot
2 years, 5 months ago
"This environment is a exact copy (mirror) of the system you're working on. Because you're in safe copy of the real system, you can do whatever you like, it will never change the system, everything stays inside the cache (the readwrite branch) ... " -
What Eclipse "Europa" means for Linux device devs
2 years, 5 months ago
"The open source Eclipse tools project will orchestrate a massive, coordinated release on June 29. Among the "Europa" releases' 21 constituent sub-project releases, four are significant to Linux device developers, according to Doug Gaff, leader of Eclipse.org's Device Software Development Project ... " -
Eclipse ships its largest-ever release
2 years, 5 months ago
The Eclipse Foundation today announced the availability of its annual coordinated project release, this year code named Europa. Europa features 21 Eclipse projects for software developers and is more than double the size of last year’s record-setting release.The release consists of more than 17 million lines of code and the contributions of over 310 open source developers located in 19 different countries.
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Display Controls and Linux: Poor Combination
2 years, 5 months ago
"Let's face it; some distributions have better controls for handling display issues than others. Two that do it right out of the box that come to mind include Fedora (Red Hat) and OpenSuSE (Novell). Each includes tools that minimize the need to do what I gleefully refer to as the “Xorg dance.” Basically, these options mean you are going to be spending more time exploring what these distros have to offer, yet less time wondering why your resolution looks completely off ... " -
Open-source remote access technology advances
2 years, 5 months ago
NoMachine has achieved a major new release of its remote access software for thin clients and other devices that run remotely hosted applications over low-bandwidth networks. NX 3.0 adds new connection options, handy per-server and per-user profiles, support for x86_64, and enhanced scriptability, the company said.
Linux.com : Tools & Utilities
Instant backups with smbmount and grsync
Need a simple yet effective way to back up your laptop or desktop machine to a network-attached storage device or a network hard disk running Samba? Using Samba's smbmount utility and the grsync backup tool, you can set up a backup system that is both reliable and straightforward in use. And since both programs are available as packages for most Linux distributions, you don't have to get your hands dirty compiling from source code and fiddling with settings.
Managing wireless connections seamlessly with wicd
The nature of my work forces me to be something of a digital nomad -- my notebook computer and a wireless connection are essential parts of my working day. I've been known to move between several wireless access points in one day. While I've had never had any problems with the wireless cards in my Linux-powered notebooks, most of the wireless connection tools I've used have fallen a bit flat. One of the few wireless connection managers that I've actually found useful is wicd -- the Wireless Interface Connection Daemon, pronounced "wicked." It's a lot like the Windows wireless network connection tool in both appearance and ease of use.
Customize your laptop keyboard with X and KDE
I am a Linux user, and I recently got an eMachines laptop. Since I'm Uruguayan, my mother tongue is Spanish, and that presented a problem: laptops usually have an American-style keyboard, and Spanish (as well as Portuguese, French, German, and other languages) requires some special keys that aren't on American keyboards. Here's how you can get international characters on your American keyboard -- and as a bonus, we'll see how you can enable the special "media" or "Internet" keys on some keyboards that aren't supported by Linux out of the box.
Back up like an expert with rsync
In the last two months I've been traveling a lot. During the same period my main desktop computer went belly up. I would have been in trouble without rsync at my disposal -- but thanks to my regular use of this utility, my data (or most of it, anyway) was already copied offsite just waiting to be used. It takes a little time to become familiar with rsync, but once you are, you should be able to handle most of your backup needs with just a short script.
Katapult yourself to keyboard productivity
If you like to keep your hands on the keyboard, you may find it tricky to launch new apps, open folder and documents, and change tracks in your music playlist. Katapult is an application launcher that does everything the Alt-F2 run dialog does, and much more.
Lock in productivity with Lockout utility
You can stop computer-based slacking -- like the compulsive reloading of Digg or Reddit at the expense of productivity -- with a few changes to your computer's DNS profile, and enforce the changes using Lockout, a tool designed to enforce discipline and increase productivity.
Dzen: pop-up windows from the command-line
I stumbled across an interesting and useful tool recently called dzen, a "general purpose messaging and notification program" written by Rob Manea. Basically, dzen provides an instant-on/instant-off pop-up terminal window, along with a multitude of options that allow you to run just about any command.
Samba adopts GPLv3 for all future releases
The Samba team announced Monday that it will be issuing all future releases of the venerable open source file and print services suite under the third iteration of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3).
Mail Notification helps unclutter the desktop
As its name implies, Mail Notification is a utility for keeping track of incoming mail and reading it in a popup window without activating your mail reader or moving other open applications. Simple to configure and easy to use, it is especially useful for watching multiple mailboxes.
A sysadmin toolbox for Web site maintenance
I run a small but fairly active Web site from a home server, as was commonly done back in the early days of the World Wide Web. What started as a learning project soon grew to be my primary hobby. It takes a bit of knowledge of Linux systems, various open sourced applications, and how the Internet works to start a Web site from scratch. Here are some of the applications and tools that help me stay on top of things.
Burning Debian packages and repositories to disc with APTonCD and apt-mirror
Have you ever wished you had access to your Linux distribution's online package repositories when you didn't have access to the Internet, or when your access was slow and unreliable? The recently released APTonCD utility allows users of Debian-based distributions to create backup CDs and DVDs of as many Debian packages as they can download. Used in conjunction with the apt-mirror utility, APTonCD can back up an entire package repository, spanning several CDs or DVDs.
Manage partitions and disks with GParted-Clonezilla live CD
Backing up partitions and hard disks sounds like work -- until you've tried Clonezilla. With Clonezilla you can clone and duplicate partitions of various formats and disks of various sizes locally or over the network. Even more impressive is the fact that you can do all this without typing complicated commands. And since Clonezilla is available as part of the GParted-Clonezilla live CD, you don't even have to install it.
Visuwords: WordNet goes graphical
RPM "relaunched" at rpm5.org
Turn Vim into a bash IDE
By itself, Vim is one of the best editors for shell scripting. With a little tweaking, however, you can turn Vim into a full-fledged IDE for writing scripts. You could do it yourself, or you can just install Fritz Mehner's Bash Support plugin.
