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NewsVac: News from around the Web
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USB devices spreading viruses
16 minutes ago
USB thumb drives are convenient, popular and often free--and they're spreading viruses like sailors on shore leave.* -
Install and Configure Cacti Monitoring tool in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) Server
46 minutes ago
Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool’s data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installations up to complex networks with hundreds of devices. -
Check Your Mysql Server Performance with MySQLTuner
1 hour, 16 minutes ago
MySQLTuner is a script written in Perl that will assist you with your MySQL configuration and make recommendations for increased performance and stability. Within seconds, it will display statistics about your MySQL installation and the areas where it can be improved. -
Simplifying MySQL Backups with Zmanda Recovery Manager
1 hour, 46 minutes ago
MySQL has become a core component of many data management solutions. Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) provides a comprehensive open-source solution for backup and recovery of MySQL databases. In this review, we've evaluated ZRM for MySQL Enterprise edition version 2.2. -
RedHat customers unswayed by Novell's pitch to switch
2 hours, 16 minutes ago
A Novell promotion promises to minimize the cost of switching to SUSE for Red Hat customers, but the economy and the effort involved in migrating remain obstacles. -
The AIX administrator's guide to learning Linux
2 hours, 46 minutes ago
Most system administrators planning to install Linux on IBM System p eventually run into an important question: Which Linux distribution should I install? This article compares two distributions from Red Hat and Novell, and weighs the pros and cons of each. -
MontaVista touts Android readiness
3 hours, 16 minutes ago
MontaVista announced that it will support developers who use MontaVista Linux with Google's Linux/Java Android mobile platform. In other Android news, Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo and Korean handset manufacturer KTF will produce an Android phone next year, says a Reuters story. -
Via panel PC resists shock, liquids
3 hours, 46 minutes ago
Via announced a fanless panel PC that runs Linux, and resists both liquids and dust. The "VIPRO VP7710" includes Via's Eden or C7 processors, a 10.4-inch touchscreen display, gigabit Ethernet, three serial ports, and two USB 2.0 ports, the company says. -
Linux connects TVs to 'Net video
4 hours, 16 minutes ago
Neuros Technology is shipping a set-top box aimed at delivering Internet video on-demand to high-definition TVs. The $300 Neuros LINK works with a free Neuros.TV service to let users play popular video content on-demand, without subscribing to cable or satellite television broadcast services, -
Bash Sub Shells
4 hours, 46 minutes ago
When writing bash scripts you sometimes need to run commands in the background. This is easily accomplished by appending the command line to be run in the background with an ampersand "&". But what do you do if you need to run multiple commands in the background? You could put them all into a separate script file and then execute that script followed by an ampersand, or you can keep the commands in your main script and run them as a sub-shell. -
Linux: Should You Use Twice the Amount of Ram as Swap Space?
5 hours, 16 minutes ago
Linux and other Unix-like operating systems use the term "swap" to describe both the act of moving memory pages between RAM and disk, and the region of a disk the pages are stored on. It is common to use a whole partition of a hard disk for swapping. However, with the 2.6 Linux kernel, swap files are just as fast as swap partitions. Now, many admins (both Windows and Linux/UNIX) follow an old rule of thumb that your swap partition should be twice the size of your main system RAM. Let us say I've 32GB RAM, should I set swap space to 64 GB? Is 64 GB of swap space really required? How big should your Linux / UNIX swap space be? -
Linux distros and Apple beat Microsoft’s homepage uptime
5 hours, 46 minutes ago
All Linux distributions have their own home base: their homepage. How well is this homepage taken care of and how well does it perform? To answer these questions we have monitored the uptime and load time of the homepages for 16 Linux distributions for a month. -
Linux provider touts support award
6 hours, 46 minutes ago
Wind River Systems announced that its Support Operations Centers in North America and Europe have achieved Service Capability and Performance (SCP) certification for the third time. Wind River is the only embedded Linux vendor to have earned the Service Strategies certification, claims the company. -
Red Hat offers mainframe-class support
7 hours, 46 minutes ago
Red Hat has introduced a new level of support for customers operating mission-critical workloads, offering decade-long product lifecycles for participating Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. -
Nvidia announces "personal supercomputer"
9 hours, 46 minutes ago
Hardware maker Nvidia has announced a new computer that has the power of a cluster of computers at a small fraction of the cost. - More News
Linux.com : Features
SimplyMEPIS: The best desktop Linux you haven't tried
Nowadays, everyone uses Ubuntu, most people have used Fedora, and many folks have tried openSUSE. SimplyMEPIS ... not so many. That's a shame, because this relatively obscure Debian-based desktop distribution from Morgantown, WV, is an outstanding desktop operating system. With SimplyMEPIS 8 at beta 5 and closing in on release, I tested the distribution and found it to be a keeper.
A graphical way to MySQL mastery
MySQL GUI Tools is a suite of graphical desktop applications for working with and administering MySQL servers. The suite consists of three tools: MySQL Query Browser, MySQL Administrator, and MySQL Migration Assistant (available only on Windows). We'll look at the first two to see how well they let us manage MySQL without using the command line.
Using external commands in Nagios
System monitoring tool Nagios offers a powerful mechanism for receiving events and commands from external applications. External commands are usually sent from event handlers or from the Nagios Web interface. You will find external commands most useful when writing event handlers for your system, or when writing an external application that interacts with Nagios.
SoftMaker Office 2008 focuses on compatibility with Microsoft Office
The free and open source office suite OpenOffice.org might be a killer app for many, but its inability to properly display documents created in the proprietary Microsoft Office formats hinders its widespread acceptance in multi-OS business environments with many legacy .doc and .xls files. If changing over to an open document format is not an option, try SoftMaker Office. It's no OpenOffice.org-killer, but it's a full featured office suite that has great compatibility with Microsoft Office. Sure, it costs $80, but you can increase your karma by running it on Linux.
Speed up your Internet access using Squid's refresh patterns
Bandwidth limitation is still a problem for a lot of people who connect to the Internet. You can improve your available bandwidth by installing Squid caching proxy server on your network with configuration parameters that will increase your byte hit rate, giving you about 30-60% more bandwidth.
Sun wrestles itself with StarOffice 9
StarOffice 9 reminds me of the classic Monty Python skit in which Graham Chapman wrestles himself. Although StarOffice is being aggressively presented as an alternative to Microsoft Office, it seems to be equally marketed and bundled to compete against OpenOffice.org, the free software project that is sponsored by Sun and that shares a common code base with StarOffice. The trouble is, the differences between the two have diminished with each release, until, with StarOffice 9, you have to wonder who the potential customers might be.
Manage your music with ID3 tag editors
The Linux desktop comes with a variety of multimedia players, such as Xine, MPlayer, and Amarok. Yet all digital media players are only as good as the files they have to work with, and preparing those files requires the best tag editor you can find. I checked out half a dozen of the more popular and stable graphical ID3 tag editors available for Linux. I found that going from no tags to great tags requires keeping more than one of these editors on hand.
Doing a diff without touching the command line
With diff-ext, GNOME users can compare and merge files from within Nautilus. If, instead, you use KDE 3, try out kdiff-ext from the same site, which works with Konqueror. Each utility handles paths to files and directories and invokes an external diff tool to perform the grunt work. With diff-ext you can easily compare two files with different names, from different directories, or whole directory trees.
iPhone applications for the Linux user
The iPhone and iPod Touch haven taken the mobile market by storm. Apple's AppStore is full of interesting applications that take advantage of the two devices's capabilities. But what's in there for Linux users? Sadly, GTKPod and Amarok cannot yet transfer files on an iPhone with the 2.x firmware upgrade, but there are other interesting ways your iPhone can interact with your Linux desktop and even servers.
sK1 vector in on good illustrations
From its name, you'd never know that sK1 is a good vector graphics drawing program, in the same category as better-known names like Inkscape, Dia, and OpenOffice.org Draw. Moreover, sK1 includes a feature that other Linux applications lack: it can read CorelDraw's CDR files and convert them to Linux-friendly formats.
Treat your C code like scripts with C Cod
C Cod is a front end to your C, C++, or Objective-C compiler that lets you treat C more like a scripting language. C Cod comes with C Server Pages, which provides support for CGI so you can write Web applications in C or C++ and have them automatically compiled on demand.
Slumberland rests easy after move away from proprietary Unix
In 2005, when Slumberland faced end-of-lifecycle replacements of its proprietary Unix platform, its warehouse management system (WMS) vendor suggested a move to Red Hat Linux and commodity x86 servers. Seth Mitchell, the infrastructure team manager at the large furniture retailer, gladly agreed. Upper management wasn't quite as quick to jump on the open source bandwagon, but once the cost savings started rolling in, everyone agreed that it was a profitable decision.
Crafting offers and invoice documents with Kraft
Kraft helps you keep track of business offers and invoices and can generate PDF files to help you easily issue these routine documents to third parties. Since Kraft is a KDE application, it can draw contact information directly from your KDE address book, so you don't have to duplicate or sync your contacts in order to generate an invoice.
Enrich your Joomla! site with image extensions
Several extensions can help you work with photographic images on your Joomla! content management system. Here are some of the best.
Bug Labs creates open source Lego for software engineers
Most of the new breed of open source hardware centers on specific products. Bug Labs is taking a different approach. Instead of developing particular devices, Bug Labs' goal is to provide a Lego-like collection of open source hardware and software that customers can use to build their own devices. According to CEO Peter Semmelhack, the result should be not only a higher degree of innovation, but also a forerunner of the hardware business of the future.
Set Mantis to track your bugs
Mantis is that rare bug-tracking program for small projects that is neither too bloated nor too featureless. It's an excellent choice for developers who need a bug tracker that the average computer user can use. Its clean interface and numerous features make bug tracking fast and easy.
Back-of-the-napkin calculations with Frink
Linux users have a myriad of calculators and unit conversion tools at their disposal. To set itself apart, Frink aims to track units for you and give you a way to quickly perform little conversions and real-world calculations without burdening you with needless details.
Ace Suares: A big Linux advocate on a small island (video)
The word "big" has two meanings here. Ace Suares is not only a big-time GNU/Linux and FOSS advocate, but he is close to 2.5 meters tall and built like a football lineman. He lives on the island of Curacao in the Netherland Antilles, where he and his wife run a small Web design and hosting firm that (of course) runs Linux servers. But trying to convert other IT people on Curacao to the FOSS cause has not been easy, and has caused Ace plenty of frustration over the years. Somehow, he keeps going; arranging conferences, holding LPI Certification classes, and generally talking up Linux to his clients, friends, and even to strangers whose businesses or government agencies might be made more efficient by using FOSS instead of proprietary software. Now we'll get out of the way and let Ace tell his story directly to you in the following video. (It's about 13:20 long.)
Clone your Ubuntu installation onto a new hard disk
Just upgraded your system with a shiny new hard disk and want to make it your new book disk? Cloning Ubuntu to another hard disk is easy. In fact, Ubuntu provides tools to clone the entire hard disk -- including the Windows partition, if there's one on there. This is the kind of fundamental task that Linux excels at, in fact.
Tidy up your mailboxes with Archivemail
Over time, people tend to accumulate a large number of messages in various email accounts, most of which they never bother with again. The problem is particularly acute for administrator accounts that receive routine notifications of events that are viewed, if at all, no more than once. The archivemail tool lets you easily archive these old messages and thereby free up some disk space and improve your mail client's performance.
