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Source: foresight

Paul Cutler has announced the third alpha release of Foresight Linux 2.0: "The third alpha of Foresight Linux 2.0 has been released. The Foresight 2.0 alpha series features a new tar-based installer that should install in less than 10 minutes, including formatting a 200 GB hard drive. Foresight .

Source: freebsd

FreeBSD 6.3 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.3. This release continues the development of the 6-STABLE branch providing performance and stability improvements, many bug fixes and new features. Some of the highlights: KDE updated to 3.5.8, GNOME .

Source: suse

The openSUSE development team has announced the release of openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 1: "We kickstart a major development into the next version of openSUSE: openSUSE 11.0. A very early alpha version, Alpha 1, is now available for download and testing. Despite many other products being developed in parallel .

Source: zenwalk

Jean-Philippe Guillemin has announced the release of Zenwalk Linux 5.0: "Zenwalk Linux 5.0 has been released! Version 5.0 is the first Zenwalk release to introduce the Freedesktop HAL system. Noticeable enhancements found in version 5.0 are numerous software updates, including the latest X.Org 7.3 suite of X servers, .

Source: Linux Today

Linux Journal: "Today the San Francisco Chronicle reported that over 45% of North American investment in green technology last year landed in California "

Source: Linux Today

Socialized Software: "I am sure that the 451 report was a prompted by yesterday's acquisition of MySQL by Sun but what's of interest is not just the what and how much but the why "

Source: Linux Today

Editor's Note: "Somewhere, lost in all the big news about Sun buying MySQL, Oracle buying BEA, and various and sundries, there was the news that Mandriva and Turbolinux were going into business together. Well, sort of "

Source: Linux Today

Once More Unto the Breach: "Oracle hammered away at the message that MySQL was missing key features high-end relational databases needed to support mission critical applications. But MySQL is the Web's database "

Source: Linux Today

AllThingsD: "The computer industry has been trying for years to come up with a portable PC smaller than the smallest standard laptops "

Source: Linux Today

ConsortiumInfo: "What is happening between the proponents of ODF and OOXML is only a skirmish in a bigger battle that involves a fundamental reordering of forces, ideologies, stakeholders, and economics at the interface of society and information technology "

Source: Linux Today

Groklaw: "There's nothing like an EU Commission investigation to get Microsoft to open up a little, is there ?"

Source: Linux Today

openSUSE: "With the new year beginning we kick start major development into the next version of openSUSE: openSUSE 11.0 "

Source: Linux Today

LinuxWorld: "Novell will head to court this April to find out what it is owed, if anything, by SCO, which had been trying to earn royalties from Unix code it did not own "

Source: Linux Today

internetnews.com: "As a crucial global standards meeting looms next month regarding the future of Microsoft's Office XML-based file formats, the company is going all out to make sure it gets its message out "

Source: Linux Today

Linux.com: "Annvix is a distribution aimed at providing a secure, stable, and fast base for servers. Be warned, however: Annvix is not for everyone "

Source: Linux Today

LinuxPlanet: "In Part 1 we set up a simple anonymous Samba file and printer server. Now we're going to share it across subnets. Both Windows and Linux clients will be able to use this server "

Source: Linux Today

MIT Technology Review: "Depending on the hardware and Splashtop settings, a person using the software--which is based on the open-source operating system Linux--can start surfing the Web or watching a DVD in less than 20 seconds, and, in some cases, in less than five "

Source: Linux Today

LinuxDevices: "A new game for Google's Linux-based Android platform uses WiFi, GPS, and phone-camera technology, along with Google maps, to create a first-person shooter game you can play 'anytime, anywhere--against real people '"

Source: Linux Today

The Open Source Advocate: "Have you ever wanted to attend a webinar but quickly discovered that the web-conference service doesn't even support your operating system ?"

Source: Linux Today

Linux.com: "Is it possible to have the performance of C and C++ and the programmer productivity of modern programming languages such as Ruby and Python in a single language ?"

Source: Linux Today

SearchEnterpriseLinux: "Estimates vary, but generally it is believed that there are 100 to 500 Linux viruses out there. The tiny number of Linux viruses that do exist have never resulted in a significant outbreak "

Source: Linux Magazine: Top Stories

Ubuntu JeOS (pronounced" juice") is an efficient variant of the Ubuntu Server operating system, configured specifically for virtual appliances. Soren Hansen and Nick Barcet discuss how to use JeOS to create your own virtual appliance to help distribute your applications.

Source: ONLamp.com

On the IPython list we have been struggling to get the system Python on Leopard to work with readline, as it is not included with Leopard. Ludwig Schwardt create a readline egg that is easy installable. The instructions for doing this are on the IPython wiki here.
Thanks Ludwig, IPython works on the System Python for Leopard, that means Dtrace support too!
Reference:
IPython
IPython Wiki Readline Instructions Leopard
Easy Install
My Links:
noahgift.com
My O’Reilly RSS Feed

Source: Linux DevCenter

I’m at the KDE 4.0 release event, and Haavard Nord from Trolltech just announced they’ll license Qt 4.0 under the GPL v3 in addition to GPL v2. The KDE folks in the room gave that announcement a standing ovation. Apparently they’ve worked recently on being able to relicense parts of KDE under the GPL v3 as well.

Source: Linux DevCenter

I have cron-apt set up on all my machines — you can get it to install any updates automatically but that sounds like Bad News to me, so instead it’s set to download and email me. I had a script that took names-of-machines-to-upgrade as arguments and did the rest for me, but that involved typing up to 50 machine names. And I am lazy.

So I finally got around to writing a script that parses a local mailbox, grabs the machine names from the subject lines, and does the rest from there. My involvement now is:
Get Thunderbird to show me only the cron-apt emails (via tag filter — tags are automatically applied).
Quick check of the emails to make sure nothing outrageous is going to happen.
Select all, hit Ctrl-6 to move them to the special mailbox (TB QuickMove Extension allows you to allocate up to 10 mailboxes to key combinations).
Find terminal window, run script.

Note that in an ideal world I’d be using Net::SSH::Perl to check for the root ssh key, but I was having problems with CPAN when I wrote this.


#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $homedir = "/home/user";
my $file = "$homedir/mail/aptget";
my $sshkey = "$homedir/.ssh/key";
my $cmd = "apt-get -y upgrade";
my @hosts;

sub runcommand();

open FILE,"+