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25th Sep 2007
24th Sep 2007
23rd Sep 2007

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News Alert


 

Linux and Open Source News for 24th September 2007

Linux CD

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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: Open Source Software Size: 179.48 MB Status: 59 seeders and 145 leechers Added: 2007-09-24 22:04:45


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: Open Source Software Size: 89.59 MB Status: 24 seeders and 21 leechers Added: 2007-09-24 21:56:28


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: PCLinuxOS Size: 688.75 MB Status: 10 seeders and 102 leechers Added: 2007-09-24 16:00:22


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: IPCop Size: 65.21 MB Status: no seeders and no leecher Added: 2007-09-24 14:13:07


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: Mandriva Size: 694.67 MB Status: 7 seeders and 45 leechers Added: 2007-09-24 09:24:09


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Source: zenwalk

Fred Galusik has announced that the release candidate for Zenwalk Linux 4.8 is now available for testing: "We are pleased to announce the Zenwalk 4.8 RC release. Thanks to our devoted users, many bugs have been fixed and many improvements have been done since the beta release. As .


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Source: asianux

Asianux 3.0, an enterprise Linux distribution developed jointly by China's Red Flag Linux, Japan's Miracle Linux and Korea's Haansoft, has been released. Some of the new features include: "Support for various hardware platform including IA32, x86_64, IA64, and IBM p-Series; Support for he latest technologies of Intel 32/64-bit .


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Source: pcbsd

PC-BSD 1.4, an easy-to-use desktop operating system based on FreeBSD, has been released: "The PC-BSD team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 1.4. This release is made available via the efforts of many developers and testers, who have spent the past months refining and improving upon .


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Source: mint

Linux Mint 3.1, code name "Celena", has been released: "This is Linux Mint 3.1, codename Celena, based on Cassandra and compatible with Ubuntu Feisty and its repositories. New in Celena: mintAssistant - a first-run wizard and lets the user fine-tune the system; mintUpload - allows the user to .


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Source: weekly

This week in DistroWatch Weekly: Editorial: Security and bug fix infrastructures in distributions News: GNOME 2.20, Mandriva 2008 editions, Fedora's new Nodoka theme, Project Indiana Released last week: KateOS 3.6, Foresight Linux 1.4, dyne:bolic 2.5 Upcoming releases: Mandriva Linux 2008, Ubuntu 7.10 Beta Site news: From FreeBSD to .



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Source: Linux Today

Mad Penguin: "It's great to see a Microsoft Project alternative built with the open source user in mind "


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Source: Linux Today

Debian Admin: "The Common UNIX Printing System, or CUPS, is the software you use to print from applications like the web browser you are using to read this page "


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Source: Linux Today

PolishLinux: "Every Unix system offers several useful commands for finding files and searching them for strings "


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Source: Linux Today

HowtoForge: "I have read about Asterisk and wanted to test it out as I will be managing/troubleshooting it at work anytime soon "


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Source: Linux Today

Blue-GNU: "I don't get it. I had a BCM38xx wireless LAN card. I bought it because I saw decent reviews on getting it working under GNU/Linux "


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Source: Linux Today

Blog of Helios: " I have stressed the point that the Austin Public Library will always have at least one distro available for checkout, should they ever find themselves in a pinch and not have a way to lay hands on one ."


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Source: Linux Today

The Open Road: "So, yes, Apple incorporates open-source projects into its products. But its adoption of open source goes far beyond development


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Source: Linux Today

Enterprise Linux Log: "Are you planning on juicing anytime soon? How about JeOSing ?"


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Source: Linux Today

Blue-GNU: "Just sharing some thoughts on FOSS businesses in the US, based on data I've collected on nearly 1000 companies "


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Source: Linux Today

LinuxDevCenter: "Justas Ingelevicius wrote in about an Autodesk international user group poll about non-Windows ports "


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Source: Linux Today

Once More Unto the Breach: "One still occasionally hears people wonder why free and open source software developers 'work for free '"


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Source: Linux Today

InfoWorld: "After much deliberation and review, I've decided to recant my previous blog entry. I no longer believe that the Linux kernel should be forked "


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Source: Linux Today

CNET News: "If you've been following the current rift in the Linux community between Linus Torvalds and his minions squaring off against Con Kolivas and the mainstream Linux fanatics, you probably know that it's getting quite heated "


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Source: Linux Today

Managing L'unix: "Well if he's trolling for readers, my thought is that getting a third regular reader wouldn't hurt the discussions here either, so "


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Source: Linux Today

Berlind's Testbed: "Yesterday, among other things, I ranted about how my Firefox was grinding to a halt "


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Source: Linux Today

ConsortiumInfo: "About 10 days ago I tried to do a bit of fog cutting by posing a few questions at Jason Matusow's blog at the end of a post he had titled Independent Implementations of Open XML "


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Source: Linux Today

The Open Road: "I believe that choice is good. But that is precisely why I'm concerned by how Russia is playing this Linux card "


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Source: Linux Today

The New Zealand Herald: "For someone whose job suddenly disappeared on him, Auckland software developer Vik Olliver is on a high "


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Source: Linux Today

PlexNex: "The look on Brad Smith's face said it all: Our legal strategies against Free Software need a fundamental re-think because a major battle front just caved in "


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Source: Linux Today

IT Pro: "With two outstanding shared-source applications awaiting approval by the Open Source Initiative, we look at the implications for the open source and free software communities, and for the credibility of Microsoft's foray into more open software "


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Source: Linux Today

CPA Australia: "As well as being cost-effective, open source software can give end users more control over their information "


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Source: Linux Today

The Inquirer: "Pamela Jones received the Knowledge Masters Award for Innovation from the Louis Round Wilson Academy "


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Source: Linux Today

Linux.com: "This small city on Florida's Gulf Coast runs one of the most cost-effective municipal IT departments around "


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Source: Linux Today

Linux-Watch: "Linux users want two things for their hardware: drivers; and easy access to those drivers "


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Source: Linux Today

Mashable: "Open source software is booming: here we round up over 480 open source applications for you to use or build upon "


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Source: Linux Today

Many other countries are turning to Linux and open-source for their school-house computer needs, and now there's a conference for those who want to bring it to schools in the U.S


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Source: Linux Today

eWeek: "Gartner declared open-source software the biggest disruptor the software industry has ever seen and postulated it will eventually result in cheaper software and new business models "


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Source: Linux Today

LinuxWorld: "Heather Carver faced major dilemmas when she became the IT director at Windsor Unified School District in California one year ago "


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Source: Linux Today

CNET News: "SugarCRM is pulling out both barrels in Japan, announcing today that it has signed an agreement with Softbank Technology to distribute SugarCRM solutions in Japan "


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Source: Linux Today

LinuxElectrons: "Delegates gathered in Barcelona, Spain for the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference heard how their software has proved a hit with a whole new market segment in the US "


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Source: Linux Today

eWeek: "'Open source can give you a common operating platform for real, and if you use Linux as a leveler, the individual ships will all right themselves rather than colliding into one another '"


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Source: Linux Today

Wired: "Who has somehow got their hands on Asus' sub-$300 subnotebook? Russians, that's who. And they like it "


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Source: Linux Today

LWN: "We (the -stable team) are announcing the release of the 2.6.22.7 kernel "


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Source: Linux Today

PRNewswire: "Monsoon Multimedia today
announced efforts to fully comply with the GNU General Public License "


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Source: Linux Today

ComputerWeekly: "Newham Borough Council has delayed a major desktop roll-out after hitting a barrier in its 10-year strategic relationship with Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard "


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Source: Linux Today

BusinessWeek: "Nicholas Negroponte hopes the One Laptop Per Child's 'Give 1 Get 1' initiative will jump-start distribution of the new XO Laptop "


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Source: Linux Today

Motho ke motho ka botho: "I snagged the AntiX ISO after a comment left elsewhere here, and while I'm not a big Fluxbox fan, I find this to be one of the most pleasant setups I've seen yet "


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Source: Linux Today

Developer.com: "Data caching is a very important consideration for J2EE applications "


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Source: Linux Today

HowtoForge: "This tutorial shows how you can install and use F-PROT Antivirus on an Ubuntu Feisty Fawn desktop "


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Source: Linux Today

KernelTrap: "Ulrich Drepper noted a difference between the Linux connect(2) man page and the POSIX specification "



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Source: Slashdot: Linux

DeviceGuru writes to tell us that the first lawsuit centered around the GPL seems to have been quickly resolved outside of the courtroom. Monsoon Multimedia was quick to admit that they had violated the GPLv2 in their modified BusyBox code and will soon be releasing the source to come into full compliance with the license.Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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Source: Slashdot: Linux

Jayze Calrtini writes "From an article from ZDNet:"If you've been following the current rift in the Linux community between Linus Torvalds and his minions squaring off against Con Kolivas and the mainstream Linux fanatics, you probably know that it's getting quite heated. You also probably know that these two entirely different ideas could create three possible paths Linux can take for the future: stay geeky and appeal to the advanced tech guru in all of us; go mainstream and leave the advanced functionality and reliable kernel behind to compete with Microsoft and Apple; or face a "civil war" that could lead to total Linux annihilation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.



previous    The O'Reilly Network ONLamp Articles and Weblogs    next


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Source: ONLamp.com

Even using the right tools, in the right way, a software project can still get into trouble. One of the most pernicious ways to fail is over-specify everything up front. As the “Lean Software Development” movement has documented, well-intentioned people often add risk to their projects when they make hard decisions too early - before any research to identify any supporting facts. The best practices are Adaptive Planning, and Just-in-Time Requirements.
Another way to fail is to allow these requirements to fall into your lap by themselves. This post explores why embracing these deceptively easy requirements still adds risk.
Suppose we have a senior programmer, call him Vu, using a program that has seen better days. This “Version One” once had a good architecture, but years of adding features without refactoring have tangled it up with compromises. So one day Vu meets Karen, a junior programmer excited by the prospects of working with a new technology, “Q”.
Q is generating breathless word-of-mouth support among the seniors and thought-leaders of the programming community. Karen pitches Vu a rewrite of this new program, “Version Two”.
Two years later, Vu scraps Version Two as unusable, and Karen promotes herself out of the picture. Then Vu, using his original platform, “P”, rewrites his program from scratch as “Version Three”. He’s surprised this only takes a few months.
Vu knows better than to make too much of the biggest apparent difference between the two projects - the platform. He admits he learned a lot from Q, and that he enjoys the workarounds for the things Q did not support. Yet he is left with the feeling that much of the hype regarding Q is just that - hype.
Other explanations are possible.
Let’s review what was available in Vu and Karen’s minds, at various phases of this project. When Vu started, he did not know the requirements for Version One, and he didn’t know what its design would be. In the days of “Rapid Application Development”, Vu’s thought leaders would have advised him to deliver high value features rapidly, and not worry about design.
This strategy worked, in terms of Version One’s early business viability. Vu put the program online, and it took care of business for him. But business use tends to inspire new requirements, and a program’s design quality shows when the time comes to add these features to it.
Vu’s program probably resisted new features, until the velocity of each one got lower and lower. This represented his program’s design quality losing its “Open Closed Principle”. As the program’s features exceeded its initial design, Vu recognized his program was reaching its age of retirement.
So along comes Karen, breathless with learning platform Q. Vu and Karen correctly identify Version One as a good case study for platform Q, and Karen dove into the project.
Karen thinks that one big part of the project - its requirements - are finished. And she knows that platform Q has very opinionated design ideals, so she does not expect to find designing Version Two very difficult. Version One has many pages with many buttons on each page, so Karen starts by coping each page over, then wiring up each button.
The biggest mistake here was the simplest. Karen did not triage the requirements, and start with the most important ones first. She did not determine a growth path for her program - a “phased delivery” plan. Her new program could have started by adding features to the old system.
No matter how many requirements are finished, and verified in live use as practical and appropriate, no software project should run a long time before putting features online. A software project without live users is like a startup company without customers. It is a plane using up runway without flying.
Collating requirements in order of business priority has a profound effect on design. At the simplest level, playing the odds, the code written first will experience the most tests over its lifespan. These tests come in the form of human interaction, automated tests, and the stress of adding new features. So the code representing the highest value features should enjoy the longest growth cycle. New features reinforce old features.
About the automated tests, let’s pretend we don’t know if Vu or Karen used them or not. We know platform Q provides their test rig. Tests may provide a high velocity, but they don’t strictly provide good steering. A car going very fast in the wrong direction will get into trouble very quickly.
Phased delivery and merciless refactoring are not merely ways to prepare for unknowable requirements. They are a system to find a cheap path to a valuable goal. Even if the goal is well known, the path is not.
Karen’s last big mistake was requesting a big-bang delivery, complete with one huge data migration, and retraining. Platform Q absolutely did not require these things - in fact both Q and all its user community endlessly advocate and support incremental releases and reversible migrations. A big-bang delivery would have lead to glitches, bugs, and down-time. Vu declined.
Version Three was Vu’s attempt to learn from the situation and recover his project. When he started, he knew a lot more about the requirements than he ever did. And he also knew the best design ideals. So, even using hoary old platform P, his job is almost as simple as transcribing a program from one language to another. Vu had two complete systems to draw from.
The vaunted technique of “Big Requirements Up Front”, hallowed in software engineering books written to this day, is hit-or-miss. If your project’s working cycle is only a few months, with a familiar platform, and if you already have complete prototypes with working designs, you have very good odds of success.
However, if you attempt to squeeze all those requirements, sideways, thru your pipe, you will get into trouble.
Just don’t blame platform Q. (-;



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Source: Linux DevCenter

Every time I write a review I get comments and e-mails asking me to review Puppy Linux. Puppy has lots of people who really seem to love and zealously support the distro. I invariably download a copy (most recently 2.17) and try and run it. I invariably give up on it very quickly. I Here’s what I recently shared by e-mail with someone on why I haven’t reviewed Puppy:
“Puppy certainly works on desktop hardware. I can make X work on almost anything in most distros but his [Barry Kauler’s] is an exception. Austrumi is another exception because it relies entirely on XVESA. XVESA doesn’t work on Toshiba laptops using Trident chipsets (CyberBlade and newer) but fbdev does. The net result is that I can make something like Damn Small Linux run with the proper cheatcode. Similar codes don’t work with Puppy even running full blown X.org for whatever reason and they should. Puppy is also the only distro other than Austrumi that I can’t get running in X on the 64-bit Gateway I’ve borrowed.
As far as repairing other OS’s [including other Linux distributions] I find that Mustang Linux, built with the sysadmin in mind, is probably the best pocket distro for that. It runs entirely in RAM on any machine with 256MB and just plain works. Slax is also good but Slax 6rc6 requires 1GB to run in RAM. Both get X right with no intervention on any of the three laptops currently in the house.
I get regular requests to review Puppy. The review would be so incredibly negative (X isn’t my only complaint) and the Puppy fans are so zealous in their defense that I decided any such review would be a flame fest and I passed on writing it. Yes, if I spent time in the forum I might get help making X on Puppy work on this laptop. (I’m out on the deck writing this on a beautiful day.) So many other distros just work on this box that I don’t see the point. There is nothing particularly compelling about Puppy.”
I have my fire extinguisher handy…
P.S.: If someone out there can explain to me why making Puppy work would be worth the extra effort and time (with time in short supply right now) without resorting to flames I might well download the latest and spend time in the Puppy Linux forum to figure out why it doesn’t work for me. Consider that a challenge because I don’t think it can be done. Remember, you have to explain to me what Puppy will do for me that other small Linux distros can’t or won’t do.



Updated: Tue Sep 25 23:55:03 2007


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