Saturday, August 30, 2008

HOWTO: Managing Active Directory Users Under Linux With adtool

The eternal fight between admins and computers: "Usually people manages Linux boxes using Windows clients but sometimes, someone (like me, for example) needs to manage a Windows server from a Linux host (it could be a normal client or another server which wants to talk to Windows)."..


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ATI R500: Mesa vs. Catalyst Benchmarking

Phoronix: "...we've taken this opportunity to see how the open-source Mesa 3D stack compares to AMD's monthly-refined Catalyst Linux Suite with the fglrx driver performs for the Radeon X1000 (R500) series."..


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Wish list: 10 improvements for KDE 4.2

KDE 4.1, released last month, brought a great number of improvements to the popular desktop environment. It's the best desktop I've ever used -- but that doesn't mean it couldn't be better. 2009 will see the release of KDE 4.2. Here are 10 features that would be great additions to a future KDE release that I hope the developers will consider.

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LyX 1.6 is ready for release

This month saw the release of LyX 1.6 release candidate 1. Occupying a position somewhere between a word processor and a mark-up editor, LyX is designed to meet the needs of professional and academic writers by allowing them to focus on their content rather than formatting and layout. It achieves this by eschewing some of the WYSIWYG conventions of a word processor.


read more

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Make etexts pretty with GutenMark

Project Gutenberg, the online library of more than 25,000 free books, is a treasure trove for bookworms and casual readers alike, but turning electronic text files into a readable form is not as easy as it may seem. In theory, since etexts are just plain text files, you should be able to open and read them on any platform without any tweaking.

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Friday, August 29, 2008

Hans Reiser Sentenced to 15-to-Life

OAKLAND, California – Linux guru and convicted murdered Hans Reiser was handed a prison sentence of 15-to-life Friday, putting a final capstone on a case that began as a murder mystery, and ended with Reiser leading police to a makeshift grave a short distance from where he strangled his wife...


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Novell Gets Close to Linux Foundation, Microsoft Gets Closer to Novell

The Linux Foundation treats Novell like a special guest while Microsoft continues its investments in Utah

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AXFS, Advanced Execute In Place Filesystem

Kernel Trap: ""I'd like to get a first round of review on my AXFS filesystem," began Jared Hulbert, describing his new Advanced XIP File System for Linux. XIP stands for eXecute-In-Place. The new filesystem received quite a bit of positive feedback."..


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Microsoft Breaks IE8 Interoperability Promise

The Register: "Microsoft said the right things, then blew it."..


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Where the Linux laptops live

Almost one-third of the 25 top-selling laptops at Amazon.com are sold with Linux. by Dana Blankenhorn..


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Another Reason to Avoid Samsung, Microsoft and Nikon Engage in Patents Affair

Samsung does not care about Free software; Nikon pays Microsoft for undisclosed patents.

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FreeBSD - A better chioce for the Open Desktop?

An article talking about the advantages of FreeBSD, compared to Linux.

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Preventing Brute Force Attacks With Fail2ban On Fedora 9


Version 1.0

Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>

Last edited 08/08/2008


In this article I will show how to install and configure fail2ban on a Fedora 9 system. Fail2ban is a tool that observes login attempts to various services, e.g. SSH, FTP, SMTP, Apache, etc., and if it finds failed login attempts again and again from the same IP address or host, fail2ban stops further login attempts from that IP address/host by blocking it with an iptables firewall rule.


Read more on Howtoforge.com


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Interview: Andy Hertzfeld

Quite often, Steve Jobs is given all the credit for the original Macintosh - but in reality, it wasn't Steve Jobs who made the largest contribution to the project; in fact, he didn't even come up with the idea. Jef Raskin envisioned an easy-to-use computer with a graphical user interface, and somewhere in 1979 he got the green light to start the Macintosh project, and together with Bill Atkinson he put together a team to develop the hard and software. It wasn't until much later that the project caught Steve Jobs' eye, who realised the Macintosh project had more potential than his own brainchild, the Lisa. One of the people on the Macintosh team was Andy Hertzfeld, and O'Reilly News interviewed him a few days ago...


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Nepomuk, KDE To Introduce the Semantic Desktop

"If you follow technology trends, you have probably heard of the semantic desktop -- a data layer for annotating and sharing the information in your computer. But what you may not be aware of is that the semantic desktop is not a distant goal, but scheduled to arrive at the end of 2008. And, when it does, the idea will probably be implemented through the work done by the Nepomuk project, and, most likely, by KDE first."..


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Nvidia 55nm Parts Are Bad Too

The Inquirer: "HOT ON THE heels of its denials that anything is wrong with the G92 and G94s comes another PCN that shows the G92s and G92b are being changed for no reason. Yup, the problems that are plaguing G84 and G86 are the same that affect seemingly all 65nm and now 55nm Nvidia parts."..


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Lenovo Demands Vow of Silence From Windows Wantaway

PC Pro: "Lenovo has allegedly asked a Linux fan to sign a non-disclosure agreement before giving him a refund on his unwanted Windows licence."..


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Gerald Carter of Likewise talks about LDAP for Linux (video)

Some GNU/Linux desktop deployments require secure authentication from a Windows Active Directory server. Gerald Carter, a long-time member of the Samba team and an enthusiastic free software developer, now works for Likewise. You can learn from this discussion if you are considering becoming a software developer, are looking for a good business model for your free software-based company, or are looking to manage your network more securely.

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Track your investments with Grism

My dad has been pestering me for some time to find him an open source tool that he could use to follow the market trends. He's been thinking about investing a little something in the market, but not without due diligence. Grism, written in Ruby, is the tool my dad now uses to easily follow the changing market trends. It allows you to create watchlists and portfolios and offers charts to help you gauge the performance of particular stocks.

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Android Market Debuts - Now Let's See Some Phones


Google is gearing up to launch its Android Market -- the open source phone software's answer to Apple's iPhone App Store. Staying true to the open model, the platform will allow more instant developer access compared to Apple's approval-based system and will also offer a set of tools for developers to track their business progress. Perhaps most significant, though: The Android Market won't be the end-all for Android-based application distribution...


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Distribution Release: Kiwi Linux 8.08

Jani Mosones has announced the release of Kiwi Linux 8.08, an Ubuntu-based distribution with support for multimedia codecs, encrypted DVDs, Flash and other desktop conveniences: "Kiwi Linux 8.08 is a desktop CD derivative based on Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS for the x86 architecture. It contains packages necessary for playing......


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What the FSF is doing Wrong

Please don’t take this post the wrong way just because of the title. I love the FSF. However, based on my observations, it has made some major mistakes that have ended up leading fewer people to freedom. Allow me to elaborate.

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EVDO and VoIP for remote audio transmission

A cellular plan using an EVDO modem can provide a connection with bandwidth of approximately 3Mbps to the client and 1.5Mbps up to the provider (comparable to DSL) for a much lower cost than alternatives such as satellite. For applications requiring high-quality audio transmission from remote locations, such as the radio remotes we do at the radio station where I work, a Linux laptop with an EVDO modem and VoIP software offers an inexpensive and reliable solution. Here's what you need to get started.

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InformationWeek: Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit: Get It Together

Serdar Yegulalp reports on the LF’s End User Collaboration Summit this fall.


“he Linux Foundation sees no reason to sit still. This October in New York City, right on my doorstep practically, they’re hosting the End User Collaboration Summit, a way to “give end users the opportunity to learn about upcoming developments in Linux and ensure they are maximizing their investment.” Count me in. The idea, according to the event homepage, involves bringing together “high performance end users with the highest level Linux community developers”. Over the course of two days, there’ll be roundtable discussions, panels, breakout sessions, and “End User Lightning Talks”, where just plain folks get to pepper the community and the vendors with their wants, needs and gripes. That last part alone could have been the whole substance of the event and I still would have wanted to drop in.”

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Behind the Doors of the Free Software Foundation

Linux.com: "The purpose of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is probably obvious from its name -- but what does promoting free software mean in terms of everyday activity?"..


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Dell Unveils New Vostros With Ubuntu

Tom's Hardware: "On Wednesday morning Dell announced two new entry-level Vostro laptops and two new entry-level desktops featuring a choice of Ubuntu or Windows Vista."..


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Wikis in Education: Teaching Students to Share Knowledge


Teaching and learning have always had a collaborative element, but wiki technology has in recent years made collaboration central to the method of many educators. Since they can be edited by anyone with access to them, education wikis are ever-changing and evolving documents that ideally represent the wisdom of the student crowd. Teachers are constantly finding new and creative ways to use wikis. One college new media class is writing its own textbook, for instance. Science classes are using wikis to develop research proposals...


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Quebec sued for ignoring Free Software

"MONTREAL, Aug. 27 /CNW Telbec/ - FACIL, a non-profit association, which promotes the collective appropriation of Free Software, contests the Quebec government purchasing methods for software used within public administrations.


read more

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The A-Z of programming languages: Python

And, yes, the language's name is indeed a tribute to Monty Python's Flying Circus

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Thomas Vander Stichele: mach 0.9.4 ‘Maroc’ is released

This new release adds support for recent OpenSuSE versions, and fixes a bug where mach fails to work because yum –version now outputs much more than the usual one line:



[thomas@ana mach2]$ yum –version

3.2.17

Installed: rpm-4.4.2.3-2.fc9.i386 at 2008-05-24 02:06

Built : Fedora Project at 2008-04-18 16:52

Committed: Bill Nottingham at 2008-04-18 22:00


Installed: yum-metadata-parser-1.1.2-8.fc9.i386 at 2008-05-24 02:07

Built : Fedora Project at 2008-02-14 13:27

Committed: Seth Vidal at 2008-02-14 22:00


Installed: yum-3.2.17-2.fc9.noarch at 2008-08-01 11:00

Built : Fedora Project at 2008-07-10 16:53

Committed: Seth Vidal at 2008-07-10 22:00


I’m sure there’s a good reason for doing that, so I guess the egg is on my face for my simplistic version parsing from before.


Soon in a Fedora repository near you, or you can get the source.

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Thomas Vander Stichele: Congrats

to OpenedHand on cashing out! May you all be made rich and live prosperously.


Just make sure you don’t get sucked into the Black Hole of Being Acquired, but keep hacking. Make us proud!

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Thursday, August 28, 2008

Automatic backup for sporadically connected clients with Box Backup

If you're a frequent business traveler who keeps important company files on your laptop, using a centralized management solution to back up files automatically during a fixed time interval won't work. Instead, consider Box Backup, which backs up files from a laptop directly to a backup server over an encrypted link.

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Related Posts:


Linux Backups Powered by Rsync
Linux Backups Powered by RDiff-Backup

Distribution Release: Turbolinux 12

Japan's Turbolinux has announced the availability of Turbolinux 12 (marketing name: Turbolinux Client 2008 Net User Package), a commercial, user-friendly desktop Linux distribution that combines the best of open source and proprietary software in one compact package. The system is based on a Linux kernel 2.6.24.7 (co-developed at......


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Flock Social Networking Web2.0 Browser in openSUSE

SUSE & openSUSE: "Flock web browser is built in Web2.0 and social networking as the core theme of the browser supporting Social networking, Photosharing, Bloggin, syndications."..


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Create Time-availability Maps with Perl and Google Earth

IBM Developerworks: "Visualize when your team members, customers, or systems are available by extracting message data and displaying it in Google Earth."..


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Run emacs from init

"emacs-server.bash will let you start up an emacs-server in the background (perhaps from an init.d script?). You can then use emacsclient to create frames or TTY connections to the new server."

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Development Release: PC-BSD 7.0 Beta 1

Kris Moore has announced the availability of the first beta release of PC-BSD 7.0, a user-friendly desktop operating system based on FreeBSD 7.0: "The PC-BSD team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of PC-BSD version 7-BETA1! This release marks the first PC-BSD based on FreeBSD 7-STABLE and......


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Development Release: Pardus Linux 2008.1 Beta

Ekin Mero?lu has announced the first beta release of Pardus Linux 2008.1: "We're happy to announce Pardus 2008.1 Beta, the first beta for the upcoming Pardus 2008.1. Some of the highlights are: a new version of Network Manager with ad-hoc, 802.1x and connection sharing capabilities; the new stable......


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Linux Jumps To 13.4 Percent Of The Stalling Server Market

According to IDC, Linux is booming. At just 9.4 percent of the overall server market in terms of revenue in 2007, Linux has now climbed to 13.4%of the overall server market, with Unix at 7.7% and Windows at 36.5%. If Linux server vendors want to continue to grow, at some point they're going to have to come to grips with Windows..


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An open letter to Barack Obama and the DNC (or, change video formats)

Senator Barack Obama and the Democractic National Convention Committee,


In his campaign speeches, Senator Obama often evokes images of citizen participation in the governmental process. He proclaims that his message of hope is built on the foundation of mutual respect, and the prospect of working together to return the government to the hands of the people.


read more

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Greens urge end to software patents

The Green Party has called for an overhaul of patent laws that would prevent software being patented.

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Developing For the Embedded Linux Nokia N810

IBM Developerworks: "The N810 is an embedded handheld system with an 800x480 display. It has Bluetooth, wireless, and USB connections. The underlying kernel is a 2.6.21 Linux® kernel, adapted for the hardware."..


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Running A File- And Print-Server With eBox On Ubuntu 8.04 Server

HowtoForge: "This article shows how to run a file- and print-server for small and medium enterprises (SME) on one single Ubuntu 8.04 server. It is very easy to set up, and management is done with an easy-to-use web interface called eBox so once the system is set up, you can forget about the command line. eBox was developed to administrate advanced services for corporate networks."..


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Behind the doors of the Free Software Foundation

The purpose of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is probably obvious from its name -- but what does promoting free software mean in terms of everyday activity? Examining the roles of the organization shows how complex the FSF's advocacy role has become. It also reveals the range of services available to the free software community, and helps to explain how such a small group has had such a major influence on computer technology.

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Linux Foundation announces end user summit

The target is businesses which are heavy users of Linux and open source in their enterprises. So no surprise its first keynote will be from Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian, with a Q&A moderated by Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin. by Dana Blankenhorn..


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Eco Innovation in the Datacenter — A Slide Deck by Angis MacDonald

Angus MacDonald, chief technologist for Sun Microsystems, Australasia, has put together a slide presentation that he calls “The Future of the Eco-Datacenter,” which investigates the increasingly pressing conjunction of ecology and economy as it affects the datacenter. He talks about the tension between demand and capacity and ways around these conflicts, such as increasing utilization, [...]..


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Interview with Tom Wickline, of the Bordeaux Project

Bordeaux is a commercial User Interface to the Wine software that allows Linux systems to run Windows software. The Bordeaux Technology Group distributes this software and provides professional support to companies and individuals running Windows apps on Linux (and soon FreeBSD). I interviewed Tom Wickline to get some details and find out what they're up to now...


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Can Open Source Replace Microsoft Exchange?

Everyone knows that Microsoft Exchange is expensive - but ubiquitous â?" and plenty
of open source projects and vendors have been trying a variety of technical
approaches to replace it. While none is yet a drop-in replacement, a PC World article looks at ways that some administrators can get a cost advantage by switching...


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BSD Job Trends

At the BSD booth at LinuxWorld San Francisco, I met up with the Director of Marketing at oDesk. ODesk provides a platform for business and qualified technology contractors to connect. Their service includes an application to record the hours worked, screenshots of work in progress as well as guaranteee payment to contractors (which are called providers in the oDesk world). They emphasize quality, trust, identify verification, and security. Providers are encouraged to demonstrate their skills by taking their qualification tests and for employers to use their feedback system...


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Ignoring open source will put companies at a serious competitive disadvantage - Gartner

2008 is well underway and it is interesting to review predictions for the year. One of Gartner's predictions for IT organisations and users in 2008 and beyond was:



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Make etexts pretty with GutenMark

Project Gutenberg, the online library of more than 25,000 free books, is a treasure trove for bookworms and casual readers alike, but turning electronic text files into a readable form is not as easy as it may seem. In theory, since etexts are just plain text files, you should be able to open and read them on any platform without any tweaking. In practice, however, this approach rarely works. Hard line breaks, for example, may ruin the text flow, making it virtually impossible to read the book on a mobile device. Another problem is that most books are stored as single files, so locating a particular chapter or section in a lengthy book can be a serious nuisance. Then there are minor but annoying formatting quirks, such as inconsistent handling of italicized text, use of straight quotes instead of smart ones, and so on.

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LyX 1.6 is ready for release

This month saw the release of LyX 1.6 release candidate 1. Occupying a position somewhere between a word processor and a mark-up editor, LyX is designed to meet the needs of professional and academic writers by allowing them to focus on their content rather than formatting and layout. It achieves this by eschewing some of the WYSIWYG conventions of a word processor. We've covered LyX in the past, so this time we'll focus on the enhancements that the 1.6 release brings with it.

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Linux Systems Being Hit By SSH-Key Attacks

US-CERT on Tuesday warned of attacks against Linux computers using compromised SSH keys. SSH (Secure Shell) is a network protocol designed to provide secure network communication via public-key cryptography. According to US-CERT, the attack appears to rely on stolen SSH keys to gain access to a system..


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Debating the Firefox SSL Certificate

Debate is reaching a fever pitch over a new security feature in Firefox 3.0 that throws out a warning page to users when a Web site's SSL certificate is expired or has not been issued by a trusted third party.

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Online Encyclopedia Shell Script For Linux And Unix

The world at your command line loving fingertips :)

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Taking the Pulse of the Eclipse Ecosystem


Java training and education has never been easy. Not only are the language and its third-party and community offerings constantly moving targets, each developer has his or her own preferences, plug-ins inventory and habits. What's more, the "book knowledge" gained in many course settings can vary wildly from what happens in the "real world" of communities and teams. MyEclipse maker Genuitec developed Pulse last year to monitor and update the most popular Eclipse plug-ins...


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Astaro: Tapping the Channel for Security Revenue


Why sell somebody else's product line when you can do a better job offering your own? That was the question that ultimately pushed Jan Hichert, CEO of Astaro, and two other cofounders to develop their own Internet security solutions for a market they viewed as needy of attention -- the small- to medium-sized business segment. Prior to deciding to go his own way, Hichert was a reseller, dealing in other vendors' security products. However, in his view, the products were too complex to use and were aimed at the enterprise market, leaving the SMB space untapped...


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A Real Space Oddity Arrives at PC Pro

PC Pro: "You may remember that, some time ago, I blogged about an interesting little computer curio called the Space Cube. Quite simply, it’s one of the smallest PCs in the world, with each side measuring around 2 inches square."..


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The Problem With Open-source Revenue Models

The Open Road: "Open-source vendors start making money from their customer base precisely at the point that the customer base is least likely to renew."..


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Four Twitter clients for Linux

Twitter is a social networking platform that keeps you in conversation by allowing you and your friends to follow each others' updates. The service lets users post and read 140-character updates, called tweets. With Twitter, you can do social networking on the fly, from your mobile phone or at your desktop, from a Web browser or a Twitter client. Twitter clients make the service more usuable by automatically checking for updates from your friends and allowing you to easily post your own updates. I tested four Twitter clients for Linux on a desktop running Ubuntu Hardy Heron.

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Nettop is &#34;almost fanless&#34;

Shuttle Incorporated unveiled a "nettop" computer claimed to offer "almost fanless" operation and use just 38 Watts. The mini-ITX based "X27" includes an Intel Atom 230 processor, a gigabit Ethernet port, DVI video output, a 2.5-inch hard drive bay, and a PCI expansion slot, says Shuttle...


Continued from Source

Vista FUD?

Seeking out and responding to FUD is not about slinging mud in the other direction. It’s about correcting lies, rumors and bad press. For me, it’s about providing an alternative view on things. I just happen to be passionate about Linux in particular, based on my own conversion.


read more

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Indywiki: Visual browser for Wikipedia

While you can quickly find an article about a particular topic using Wikipedia's search capabilities, there are other ways to explore Wikipedia that break away from the traditional search box approach. Indywiki is a good example of a tool that tries to rethink the way we search and browse information in Wikipedia.

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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

10 &#34;Really Cool&#34; Icon Sets for Ubuntu/GNOME Desktop

I’m going to share to you some of my favorite set of icons. These are specifically made for Ubuntu, as well as any other Linux distro with a GNOME desktop. So here they are:..


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Psystar Responds to Apple Suit, Will Countersue

Mac clone maker Psystar plans to file its answer to Apple's copyright infringement lawsuit Tuesday as well as a countersuit of its own, alleging that Apple engages in anticompetitive business practices. Miami-based Psystar, owned by Rudy Pedraza, will sue Apple under two federal laws designed to discourage monopolies and cartels, the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, saying Apple's tying of the Mac OS to Apple-labeled hardware is "an anticompetitive restrain of trade", according to attorney Colby Springer of antitrust specialists Carr & Ferrell. Psystar is requesting that the court find Apple's EULA void, and is asking for unspecified damages. Psystar's attorneys are calling Apple's allegations of Psystar's copyright infringement "misinformed and mischaracterized". Psystar argues that its OpenComputer product is shipped with a fully licensed, unmodified copy of Mac OS X, and that the company has simply "leveraged open source-licensed code including Apple's OS" to enable a PC to run the Mac operating system...


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Is There a Future for UltraSPARC Workstations?

OSNews reader rom508 sent us a note that apparently, Sun has ceased selling all of its UltraSPARC-based workstations, with only their x86 workstation offerings remaining. The Ultra 25 and Ultra 45 workstations, both UltraSPARC-based, are still listed on Sun's website, but are marked as 'end-of-life', with the notice that they are "superceded by the next generation Sun Ultra 24 Workstation [x86]". One must wonder if this means the end of Sun's UltraSPARC workstation line. As a proud owner of an indestructible Ultra 5, I must say, that would be rather sad...


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Acetoneiso2 - A Full Feature Rich Image/ISO Tool For openSUSE

SUSE & openSUSE: "AcetoneISO2 will let You mount typical proprietary images formats of the Windows world such as ISO BIN NRG MDF IMG and is more than a simple ISO mount software."..


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VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB

Phoronix: "With our initial CrossFire for Linux article we had delivered benchmarks from the Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870, now though we are delivering the first Radeon HD 4870 X2 benchmarks under Ubuntu Linux."..


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How the bad documentation hurts GNU/Linux.

It could be very confusing when a user follow badly written documentation to achieve task. Especially if this task is important and the user is novice.


read more

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Software Patents Riot Spreads to Four Continents

Renewed action against the spread of software patents seems to be surging so suddenly

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New Version of Xen Hypervisor Hits the Streets


Xen.org, the developer of the open source Xen project, on Wednesday announced the release of the Xen 3.3 hypervisor engine. The product is the result of a distributed development effort by senior engineers from more than 50 leading hardware, software and security vendors. Xen 3.3 includes enhancements that further advance its position as a fast, scalable and secure virtualization engine for a broad range of server and PC chipsets from supercomputers to PDAs...


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Mozilla Introduces New Ubiquity Mashup Machine


Mozilla Labs launched a new prototype Tuesday aimed at giving Internet users new ways to create mashups of online content. Dubbed "Ubiquity," the technology is Mozilla's solution what it sees as a common and time-consuming problem Web surfers face when they try to compile information from the Web. "Most people do not have an easy way to manage the vast resources of the Web to simplify their task at hand. For the most part they are left trundling between Web sites, performing common tasks resulting in frustration and wasted time," Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla, wrote on his blog...


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SSH Key-based Attacks

US-CERT is aware of active attacks against linux-based computing infrastructures using compromised SSH keys. The attack appears to initially use stolen SSH keys to gain access to a system, and then uses local kernel exploits to gain root access. Once root access has been obtained, a rootkit known as "phalanx2" is installed.

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Versioned MySQL Backups with Bazaar

So maybe you have a backup solution in place and running periodically to make sure your databases are safe. At any point in time if the system fails, you’re prepared. But what if, right before a backup, an unruly visitor finds an expolit on your application and wipes out a few tables? Your “backup” is then no longer a backup you can rely on. How do we fix this? Versioning.

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Penguins Linux Ad (YouTube video)

YouTube: "Imagine a place....where everything is possible..."..


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KMess - MSN Messenger Client for KDE in openSUSE Linux

SUSE & openSUSE: "The strength of KMess is it’s integration with the KDE desktop environment, focus on MSN Messenger specific features and an easy-to-use interface."..


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Voiceroute execs talk about going (mostly) open source (video)

Voiceroute, a
software PBX vendor, originally started as a proprietary
software company but went (at least partly) open source
earlier this year. In this video, CEO Ming Guang Yong says
the company should have moved toward open source "a lot sooner,"
and explains why. He and CTO Navin Kumar also talk about
some of the specific differences between their open source
and proprietary versions, including how and where they draw
the line between the two, and share their thoughts about
dealing with open source developers and building a
successful open source development community.

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Inside the SFLC's &#34;Practical Guide to GPL Compliance&#34;

One of the goals of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is to become a center for education in free and open source software (FOSS) legal issues. As part of this effort, the SFLC has already published "A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects." Its latest effort in public education, released last week, is "A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance," a 15-page guide for FOSS projects on how to avoid violations of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The guide is a practical summary of its subject, but its wording is unnecessarily legalistic, and its structure and omissions sometimes fall short of the goal of being a standalone reference.

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Space Cube - The World's Smallest Linux PC

Meet the Space Cube — the world's smallest fully functional PC. Primarily designed for use in space, it somehow manages to cram a working PC with USB ports, card readers, audio outputs and proprietary interfaces into a tiny cube chassis measuring just two inches square. It runs a basic Linux front-end...


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Sun for Sale?

Dropping profits and stock prices have analysts speculating that Sun could be a target for either acquisition or a restructuring in which the company would sell off parts of the business and focus on a smaller set of technologies. In a July 31 report, the 451 Group analyst firm raised the possibility of Sun being acquired: 'Sun's sunken stock price creates a relative bargain considering its roughly $4 billion cash on hand, sizeable intellectual property and patent portfolio, and of course, its respected technology and products'...


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Be a Productive Linux User


Use Terminator: Terminator is a nice way to free your valuable screen space from multiple terminal windows. Instead of using one terminal window for each task, divide an existing window horizontally or vertically each time you need a new terminal window. So if you find yourself using 8 terminal windows, you can use Terminator and pack your terminals into 2 windows.



Set Terminal as Desktop Background: Some time ago, I showed you how to setup your terminal as a desktop background. This is a great way to assign certain portion of your desktop background for terminal window which can be seamless and be part of your desktop wallpaper. Two popular way to achieve this is with the use of Tilda or Devilspie. It would be even better if we could setup Terminator with Devilspie; I will have to find out and get back to you on that.




Use Conky: Conky can be used to have system stats, live, right on the desktop. Apart from giving you OS stats, conky can be setup as a music player and can alert you when you receive e-mail with IMAP and POP3 support. Conky has similarities with devilspie in the sense that it also integrates itself with the desktop background, without having a separate window for itself.



Use Pidgin: I am still surprised to see people using separate IM clients for chatting. Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client, which is a great way to stay connected with your friends regardless of the IM service they use. If you are a console junkie you can use the console version of pidgin, known as Finch.



Gnome-do: This will set your productivity on fire. Gnome Do wiki has an excellent description of what can be done with this wonderful application, so I will quote them:


“GNOME Do (Do) is an intelligent launcher tool that makes performing common tasks on your computer simple and efficient. Do not only allows you to search for items in your desktop environment (e.g. applications, contacts, bookmarks, files, music), it also allows you to specify actions to perform on search results (e.g. run, open, email, chat, play). Want to send an email to mom? Simply type “email mom.” Want to listen to some music? Simply type “play beatles.” Do provides instantaneous, action-oriented desktop search results that adapt to reflect your habits and preferences. For example, if you use Firefox web browser often, typing “f” in Do will launch it. Or, if you visit The New York Times webpage often, Do will open it if you simply type “nyt.” Unlike other search tools that present search results as flat, homogeneous lists, Do provides familiar graphical depictions of search results that assure you that your intent is being realized correctly; searching for “mom” will show a picture of mom, and searching for “beatles” will show a Beatles album cover. Do has many more powerful and exciting capabilities that must be seen to be appreciated.”



Do you know any other linux application that will help you be a more productive linux user? Do share them on comments.


If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Digg. I’d appreciate it. :)






..


Complete Story

Cisco buys PostPath, targets Microsoft Exchange

No one saw this coming. Cisco, the networking giant, bought PostPath, makers of the Linux-based Exchange server replacement PostPath Server, on August 27th 2008.

..


Complete Story

Easy file uploads with Droopy

Suppose someone wants to send you a large file. They could try to send it via email, but many email servers impose limits on file size. They could try sending it over during an instant messenger or Internet Relay Chat session, but that's slow, as the file actually gets transferred twice: once to the chat server, then to your machine. File transfer services like RapidShare and MegaUpload are fine, but not for confidential information. Of course, you could set up an FTP server on your box, but you don't want to leave that door open all the time. Luckily, there's now an easy solution: droopy.

..


Complete Story

Development Release: Debian Live 5.0 Beta 1

Daniel Baumann has announced the availability of the first set of live CD images for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny", complete with a hard disk installer and available in three desktop variants (GNOME, KDE and Xfce): "The Debian Live team is pleased to announce the first beta of Debian......


Complete Story

Moving LVM volumes to a different volume group

I recently ordered a brand new PowerEdge T105 server which came with an 80 GB hard disk. I partitioned it with LVM, installed Debian Lenny and moved over the bulk of my things from the old server to the new server. Only one thing remained: my media collection, which is stored on a 500 GB RAID1 array on the old server. That RAID1 array is also partitioned using LVM in a single 500 GB volume group.


read more

..


Complete Story

Novell and Microsoft: Stop with the FUD already

Unlike a lot of open-source supporters, I don't turn red with anger at the very thought of Novell working with Microsoft. Like it or not, getting Linux and Windows to work better together makes good, hard business sense.

..


Complete Story

Anatomy of Linux Dynamic Libraries

Dynamically linked shared libraries are an important aspect of GNU/Linux. They allow executables to dynamically access external functionality at run time and thereby reduce their overall memory footprint. This article investigates the process of creating and using dynamic libraries, how to explore them, nd explores how these libraries work...


Complete Story

5 Factors Making Ubuntu Server Business Ready

Works With U: "Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, is getting serious about the server...There are many factors that make Ubuntu a strong server platform, but the top 5 are:..


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10 Fundamental Differences Between Linux and Windows

TechRepublic: "#2: Licensing freedom vs. licensing restrictions...with the GPL, you can download a single copy of a Linux distribution (or application) and install it on as many machines as you like. With the Microsoft license, you can do none of the above."
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Complete Story

Tailf - watch the linux log file grows

Another overused linux command that has been quite around from this linux blog entry and widely used command on monitoring log file tail. Tail binary allows a user to watche the growth of a log file. Watching the log file grows can be done using an additional -f parameter. Alternatively, another approach to watch a log file grows can be done using tailf binary command.

To tailf or to tail -f ? That is the question.

Tailf binary is part of util-linux-ng linux package while tail binary is part of coreutils linux package.

File size difference of tailf and tail binary command:

# ls -la /usr/bin/tailf /usr/bin/tail

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7416 2007-10-16 21:48 /usr/bin/tailf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 43576 2007-10-30 17:52 /usr/bin/tail

Man Tailf
Tailf will print out the last 10 lines of a file and then wait for the file to grow. It is similar to tail -f but does not access the file when it is not growing. This has the side effect of not updating the access time for the file, so a filesystem flush does not occur periodically when no log activity is happening. Tailf requires only a single parameter when watching a growing log file. Tailf follows the following command format

# tailf logfile

Tailf is extremely useful for monitoring log files on a laptop when logging is infrequent and the user desires that the hard disk spin down to conserve battery life.

Tailf Usage Examples

# tailf /var/log/messages
# tailf /var/log/maillog


HTH

Linux under attack: Compromised SSH keys lead to rootkit

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) has issued a warning for what it calls “active attacks” against Linux-based computing infrastructures using compromised SSH keys.

The attack appears to initially use stolen SSH keys to gain access to a system, and then uses local kernel exploits to gain root access. Once root access has been obtained, a rootkit known as “phalanx2? is installed, US-CERT said in a note on its current activity site.

Continue Story

News to know: Psystar vs. Apple; WGA; Linux under attack; FAA failure

Here are today's notable headlines. You can get News To Know via email alert and RSS daily: News.com: Psystar responds to Apple suit, will countersue Sam Diaz: Does Psystar have a legit argument in Apple countersuit? Psystar countersues Apple, alleges anticompetitive business practices.....


Complete Story

One Less Windows User


As editor for LinuxInsider for more than a year now, I figured the time was right to start walking the walk with my personal machine. So I took my Dell Inspiron 1150 to this year's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo with the intention of switching my operating system to one of the many Linux distros. I visited the booths of several distros, Ubuntu, Suse, Red Hat and even BSD, grabbing disks along the way. The plan was to give each a test drive, then choose one based on my experience...


Complete Story

Development Release: SimplyMEPIS 8.0 Beta 1

Warren Woodford has announced the availability of the first beta release of SimplyMEPIS 8.0, a beginner-friendly desktop Linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux: "First beta of SimplyMEPIS 8.0 available for testing. Warren announces the first SimplyMEPIS Beta, version 7.9.70. The MEPIS beta offers up-to-date user applications delivered on......


Complete Story

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Be a Productive Linux User

5 ways to increase your productivity and enhance your Linux user experience...


Complete Story

PostPath: Enterprise-strength open source alternative for Exchange

For enterprise system administrators looking for interoperability with Microsoft Exchange, but not the high costs associated with it, PostPath email and collaboration server could be a smart business investment. Boasting interoperability with Exchange environments for a third of the cost, thanks to its use of the Postfix mail server and many other open source components, PostPath provides drop-in capability and compatibility with Exchange environments without the need for making changes to Outlook on the client side. Being compatible with Exchange means that it can be managed using Microsoft's Active Directory infrastructure. The latest version, PostPath v3.1.2, adds support for Blackberry Enterprise Server and ActiveSync, allowing you to use mobile devices to access your email.

..


Complete Story

RDesktop - remote desktop howto

We can never remove the fact that some companies still use any other desktop operating systems from their network. Several reasons for these are due to commercial and propriety softwares and customized applications that currently being managed and needed by certain specific company departments, whether those clients are located remotely or just a single department hop, providing support with these clients is never been at rest.

Here's a document entry on managing and connecting to Windows (TM) based operating systems (Windows 2000/2003, XP Terminal servers, Windows NT) from Linux box using a remote desktop tool called RDesktop.

rdesktop is an open source client for Windows NT Terminal Server and Windows 2000/2003 Terminal Services, capable of natively speaking Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to present the user's NT desktop. Unlike Citrix ICA, no server extensions are required.

rdesktop currently runs on most UNIX based platforms with the X Window System, and other ports should be fairly straightforward.

rdesktop was initially written by Matthew Chapman based on various scarce documentation, wire sniffs, and trial-and-error. It is released under the GNU Public Licence (GPL). Please send feedback, bug reports and patches to the appropriate mailing list. Patches can also be submitted to the SF patch tracker.

This X client for remote desktop to windows machine makes use of RDP on establishing protocol with Windows OS machines. Rdesktop connects to remote machines extremely fast compared to other remote desktop tools. By default, rdesktop establishes TCP/UDP connection to host's port 4899. Extreme works have been done to make Rdesktop to cover a lot of nice features that would be very usable with remote connection to window-based client machines.

RDESKTOP INSTALLATION
=====================

# yum -y install rdesktop

BINARY LAUNCH:

Ctrl+F2, rdesktop

RDESKTOP USAGE
==============

# rdesktop windows-machine-host
# rdesktop 123.123.123.123


The command issued above attempts to connect to a windows machine with an IP address of 123.123.123.123 . If no firewall exists between the connecting host, and the client, a successful rdesktop connection would be established immediately prompting rdesktop machine for username and password details.

If you wish to connect with supplied username and password using rdesktop

# rdesktop 123.123.123.123 -u username -p password

The above command connects remotely to windows XP machine and supply the needed username and password. This command does not work by default to Windows 2000 terminal machines as the default auto login configuration from Windows 2000 needs further tweaking. This tweaking method would not be discussed here. However, the command above works out right with Windows 2003 terminal server machines.

Rdesktop also features domain authentication during the remote connection attempt. The authentication attempt queries domain servers for centralized user authentication. This can be possible using rdesktop parameters.

# rdesktop 123.123.123.123 -d domain.com

Screen geometry can also be specified before remote connection is being made. Here's a sample example of using rdesktop geometry parameter

# rdesktop 123.123.123.123 -g 80%

which uses 80% of client screen to be displayed from connecting host.

Data transfer between the two host using rdesktop can also be encrypted by passing toggle rdesktop parameter like do

# rdesktop -E 123.123.123.123

For data compression during rdesktop data transfer can be done like so

# rdesktop -z 123.123.123.123

Audio sounds from rdesktop server can also be redirected to rdesktop machines. This can be handy if you would like to have livestream audio sounds and dumps it live to rdesktop client machines, which can be done like so

# rdesktop -r sound:remote 123.123.123.123

Alternatively, audio sound from client can be heard from rdesktop server by toggling the remote audio parameter like so

# rdesktop -r sound:local 123.123.123.123

Remote desktop protocol version can also be specified manually to rdesktop connection using the followinf rdesktop parameters

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-4 uses RDP version 4
-5 uses RDP version 5
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Remote client's disk, device, COM ports, LPT ports, printer details can also be specified from rdesktop command.

Using rdesktop, here is my captured simulataneous rdesktop screenshots with two remote machines Windows XP and Windows 2000 from Fedora 7 desktop:


Rdesktop Summary
===========

Works and task between two or more remote hosts can be done in a more effective, and efficient manner using X based remote desktop tool like rdesktop.

Goodluck and have a nice weekend!

All windows operating systems are products, propriety and trademarks managed and owned by their own respective company.

Related Post:

Passwordless Remote Connection with XP

HowTo: Install Linux Hardware Browser

Tired of looking your detailed hardware configuration specs? Forgot those command line commands to identify your devices and hardware specs?

Here's a GUI based hardware browser that displays your current hardware specifications and profile with no fuzzy and administrative menu. Hwbrowser shows all your hardware specifications including hard drive controllers, sound and video cards, network and USB devices, attached storage devices and so on.

Hardware Browser - HwBrowser Installation

Fedora supports installation of hwbrowser via yum. To install hwbrowser, simply issue

# yum -y install hwbrowser

that downloads around 107K of package size.

Though this hwbrowser linux tool does not provide any further menus like options to remove hardware devices, edit hardware drivers, disable interrupts, or any other administrative hardware functions - hwbrowser simply displays all those hardware specifications currently being seen from your CPU and devices.

Binary Launch

# hwbrowser

Enjoy.

Hwbrowser ScreenShot:


Related Reading:
Alternative Hardware Devices Viewer
Linux Hardware and Software Clock
CD/DVD Drive Technical Specifications
Speed Up your Hard Drive

RDesktop - remote desktop howto

We can never remove the fact that some companies still use any other desktop operating systems from their network. Several reasons for these are due to commercial and propriety softwares and customized applications that currently being managed and needed by certain specific company departments, whether those clients are located remotely or just a single department hop, providing support with these clients is never been at rest.

Here's a document entry on managing and connecting to Windows (TM) based operating systems (Windows 2000/2003, XP Terminal servers, Windows NT) from Linux box using a remote desktop tool called RDesktop.

rdesktop is an open source client for Windows NT Terminal Server and Windows 2000/2003 Terminal Services, capable of natively speaking Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to present the user's NT desktop. Unlike Citrix ICA, no server extensions are required.

rdesktop currently runs on most UNIX based platforms with the X Window System, and other ports should be fairly straightforward.

rdesktop was initially written by Matthew Chapman based on various scarce documentation, wire sniffs, and trial-and-error. It is released under the GNU Public Licence (GPL). Please send feedback, bug reports and patches to the appropriate mailing list. Patches can also be submitted to the SF patch tracker.

This X client for remote desktop to windows machine makes use of RDP on establishing protocol with Windows OS machines. Rdesktop connects to remote machines extremely fast compared to other remote desktop tools. By default, rdesktop establishes TCP/UDP connection to host's port 4899. Extreme works have been done to make Rdesktop to cover a lot of nice features that would be very usable with remote connection to window-based client machines.

RDESKTOP INSTALLATION
=====================

# yum -y install rdesktop

BINARY LAUNCH:

Ctrl+F2, rdesktop

RDESKTOP USAGE
==============

# rdesktop windows-machine-host
# rdesktop 123.123.123.123


The command issued above attempts to connect to a windows machine with an IP address of 123.123.123.123 . If no firewall exists between the connecting host, and the client, a successful rdesktop connection would be established immediately prompting rdesktop machine for username and password details.

If you wish to connect with supplied username and password using rdesktop


# rdesktop 123.123.123.123 -u username -p password


The above command connects remotely to windows XP machine and supply the needed username and password. This command does not work by default to Windows 2000 terminal machines as the default auto login configuration from Windows 2000 needs further tweaking. This tweaking method would not be discussed here. However, the command above works out right with Windows 2003 terminal server machines.

Rdesktop also features domain authentication during the remote connection attempt. The authentication attempt queries domain servers for centralized user authentication. This can be possible using rdesktop parameters.

# rdesktop 123.123.123.123 -d domain.com

Screen geometry can also be specified before remote connection is being made. Here's a sample example of using rdesktop geometry parameter

# rdesktop 123.123.123.123 -g 80%

which uses 80% of client screen to be displayed from connecting host.

Data transfer between the two host using rdesktop can also be encrypted by passing toggle rdesktop parameter like do


# rdesktop -E 123.123.123.123


For data compression during rdesktop data transfer can be done like so

# rdesktop -z 123.123.123.123


Audio sounds from rdesktop server can also be redirected to rdesktop machines. This can be handy if you would like to have livestream audio sounds and dumps it live to rdesktop client machines, which can be done like so


# rdesktop -r sound:remote 123.123.123.123


Alternatively, audio sound from client can be heard from rdesktop server by toggling the remote audio parameter like so

# rdesktop -r sound:local 123.123.123.123

Remote desktop protocol version can also be specified manually to rdesktop connection using the followinf rdesktop parameters

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-4 uses RDP version 4
-5 uses RDP version 5
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Remote client's disk, device, COM ports, LPT ports, printer details can also be specified from rdesktop command.

Using rdesktop, here is my captured simulataneous rdesktop screenshots with two remote machines Windows XP and Windows 2000 from Fedora 7 desktop:


Rdesktop Summary
===========

Works and task between two or more remote hosts can be done in a more effective, and efficient manner using X based remote desktop tool like rdesktop.

Goodluck and have a nice weekend!

All windows operating systems are products, propriety and trademarks managed and owned by their own respective company.

Related Post:

Passwordless Remote Connection with XP

Interview With Kris Moore, PC-BSD Lead Developer

"Not all user-friendly desktop operating systems are based on Linux; as demonstrated by PC-BSD, it is entirely feasible to turn a "geek" project into a piece of software that can be installed and used by even less technical computer users. Distrowatch talks to Kris Moore, PC-BSD lead developer, about his love affair with FreeBSD and the upcoming PC-BSD 7.0."..


Complete Story

The Monkey On Microsoft's Back

"Poor Microsoft. This week, the Redmond, Wash., giant is gearing up for the next big release of its Web browser, a leap from Internet Explorer 7 to IE 8. When open-source competitor Mozilla released its last update of Firefox in June, the Web went wild: People downloaded more than 8 million copies in 24 hours. Microsoft's release might not have such a frat party feel. Even as it gears up to release IE 8, the developers behind the Firefox Web browser are experimenting with a new technology that sharpens the threat their browser software poses to Microsoft's most valuable businesses. The new technology, dubbed TraceMonkey, promises to speed up Firefox's ability to deliver complex applications." While many have abandoned Microsoft's browser offerings, Microsoft will be introducing an innovative new type of selective privacy mode called InPrivate with IE8...


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10 Fundamental Differences Between Linux and Windows

I have been around the Linux community for more than 10 years now. From the very beginning, I have known that there are basic differences between Linux and Windows that will always set them apart. This is not, in the least, to say one is better than the other. It’s just to say that they are fundamentally different...


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Beyond Linux From Scratch 6.3 Packed with New Refinements

Softpedia: "The BLFS Development Team has recently announced the launch of BLFS 6.3 (Beyond Linux From Scratch) along with many new package additions, as well as updates and various adjustments."..


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Google drops Bluetooth, GTalkService APIs from Android 1.0

Good Gear Guide: "Google dropped Bluetooth and the GTalkService instant messaging APIs (application program interfaces) from the set of tools for the first version of the mobile phone OS, Android 1.0, according to the Android Developers Blog."..


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Firefox to Gulp JavaScript Faster With New TraceMonkey Feature


Mozilla has announced the launch of a new feature for its Firefox Web browser designed to make it perform faster. Called "TraceMonkey," the feature is an evolution of Firefox's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine and will be built into Firefox 3.1, according to the company. To increase JavaScript speeds by an order of magnitude or more, Mozilla designed TraceMonkey with a new type of just-in-time compiler. The company has measured speeds up to 37.5 times faster for specific "micro-benchmarks," according to Brendan Eich, Mozilla's chief technology officer...


Complete Story

Software Freedom Day - huh?

No, this is not a day when you free yourself of all your software addictions. Rather, Software Freedom Day is an annual grass roots effort to educate the public on the virtues of free and open source software.

..


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Architects Apply Open Source Principles to Help Others

You know the results of FOSS communities are making a lasting impression when other groups try emulate their success by using the same concepts. The charitable organization Architecture for Humanity says they can bring about an "architectural revolution" by pairing the principles of collaboration and open source with needs of millions of people worldwide living in poverty today.

..


Complete Story

Thomas Vander Stichele: Angel

There’s a guy in Barcelona who runs an antique store. Well, maybe it’s not an antique store, because it doesn’t like like stuff my mom would actually buy. And I’m not even sure if he’s selling.


But he cooks for anyone who comes in, whatever is available, and turns it into honest and magical meals. He’s probably Barcelona’s best kept secret - he’s not in any guide (which is a good thing), and I doubt he even has a license to do what he does.


He gives you whatever he has, and what he has is always excellent quality. He probably goes by the farmers and vineyards himself to select his products. No is not a word he accepts, and there’s no way you can eat everything he gives you.


I’m always a bit worried when I bring people there because it takes some time to get there, it’s always difficult to organize it, and you just never know how people will react, or how Angel will react if he happens to be in a less sociable mood and gets asked to cook something non-meaty for example. But I’ve just never been disappointed, so I don’t know why I worry.


Today we went there to kick off our developer meeting now that everyone’s back from holidays and Julien, a new guy, just started. We got chorizo, manchego cheese, beans, a huge tortilla, a special Cabrales cheese which was very strong but good, bread, and duck pate. And those were just the starters, I had to explain to my surprised collagues. After that, we got blood sausage, cutlets, and hake. All of this with some wine, and desert and coffee at the end.


And when you get up and leave, you ask him for the price, and he makes one up on the spot for the whole group. Rumour has it it’s cheaper if you’re a girl and can part with some pecks on the cheek.


If you ever get to Barcelona, drop me a line for the address. And let me know if you write for a tour guide or travel magazine, so I can give you the wrong information. I don’t ever want to see it get ruined.

..


Complete Story

Christian Schaller: GUADEC photos online

I have been looking for a new hosting option for a while and last week I finally choose one. Based on recommendations from others I ended up going with Slicehost. Slicehost advertise themselves as being a hosting company for developers, which I learned is definitely true. It is the first time ever I had a hosting setup where I even needed to install and configure my own email server. Learned a lot about Postfix over the last weekend )


That said their setup is pretty nice. You can choose which linux distro you prefer from a quite big list and they will automatically set up your slice with that distro for you. They also have nice webtools for configuring things like DNS. And finally they got a lot of easy to follow tutorials on how to get common server tasks configured and running. Most of them Ubuntu centric, but I found it easy enough to find the Fedora equivalents when needed.


Once the basics was taken care of it was time for me to get my photo gallery back online after a longer period of being offline. Mostly due to me not having kept the gallery code up-to-date (and thus secure) it had been disabled at my old hosting provider. So upgrading to latest version was step one. The upgrade instructions turned out to not work at all, but doing a fresh install seemed to do the upgrade job just as well, it still managed to pick up all my old photos. I am still using Gallery 1.x though, but I noticed that Fedora packages Gallery 2. So I should probably switch to that at some point as having Fedora packagers make sure I am up to date without glaring security holes is more likely to work in the long run.


Anyway, to summarize a long story, my photos from GUADEC are now online )


I also orderd myself an Epson 350 photo scanner today after discovering that <a href=”http://avasys.jp/hp/menu000000500/hpg000000442.htm”>Epson</a> actually provides official drivers for Linux. Hopefully I will soon also get all my pre-digital photos online.

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Complete Story

A business built on open source, virtualization, and clouds

ReadyTechs provides network support services for companies that don't want the expense of hiring and caring for their own employees. Now CEO Gerry Libertelli says the company is using Linux virtualization to open a new income stream based on cloud computing.

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Nepomuk and KDE to introduce the semantic desktop

If you follow technology trends, you have probably heard of the semantic desktop -- a data layer for annotating and sharing the information in your computer. But what you may not be aware of is that the semantic desktop is not a distant goal, but scheduled to arrive at the end of 2008. And, when it does, the idea will probably be implemented through the work done by the Nepomuk project, and, most likely, by KDE first.

..


Complete Story

CVL Lets You Tinker With HDR Images on Your GPU

Linux.com: "If your desktop hardware includes a graphics processing unit (GPU), you can do some cool image processing with the CVL suite of tools, which includes in image viewer, an image tone mapper, and a command-line tool for non-interactive image processing."..


Complete Story

Democratic National Convention Against GNU/Linux or Bought by Microsoft?

Ixnotes: "This isn’t about GNU/Linux vs Linux, this isn’t about the Democratic National Convention being anti-GNU/Linux or being bought by Microsoft. No. This is about advocating against solutions that are marginalizing groups of people."..


Complete Story

Objectify: Overview

This is part of a series of articles from J. Scott Edwards about his pet project Objectify.

– Editor



History


Right after Y2K I decided to resurrect a project I had started in the late ’70s to write an operating system. I started a project called EasyOS (1) on SourceForge to develop an OS based upon the best parts of Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc. After toying around for a while I decided that part of the problem was that current operating systems are basically the same as the operating systems I had worked with in the 1970s, with the addition of a GUI. One example would be that all data is stored in files.


I decided that instead of using the same paradigms as existing operating systems, I needed to rethink those paradigms. I started another project: New World OS on SourceForge and in December 2004, I wrote an article for OS News about some of my ideas.


When it came time to start developing the system, I debated whether I should start completely from scratch; develop it from the hardware interface level and work my way up, or if I should start by testing some of my ideas on an existing system. If I started on top of an existing system I could see if my ideas were feasible, before dumping years worth of time into them only to discover that I had overlooked some fundamental flaw. I decided it made the most sense to test out some ideas on top of another OS first. To do releases on SourceForge I needed a package name. New World OS didn’t seem like a good package name because it wasn’t really an OS yet. I decided to call the package Objectify because it stored everything as an object. I often think that I should have called it Insomnia because almost all of it was developed while I should have been sleeping.



I started out storing the objects in files, each object in a separate file, but that proved to be cumbersome. I then tried storing all of the objects in a “sparse” file. Oddly, that ended up consuming gobs of disk space. Since one of my main ideas was to store objects directly on the hard drive and NOT in files, I ultimately decided to “just do it” and started reading and writing objects directly to an entire hard drive (like /dev/hdb) or a disk partition (like /dev/hda7). This worked quite well on Linux, but hasn’t worked on other operating systems like FreeBSD and OpenBSD, so I added the capability to substitute a regular file (like ~/.private.obj) for the block device (2).


One of the fundamental ideas, if not THE fundamental idea, was to eliminate storing data in files. I wanted to store data in a format more natural to the computer, so that a program did not have to read and convert it’s data from a file, do its thing, and then convert the data back to a file. I wanted the program to store it’s data in objects and then, only if the data had to be exchanged with another device, convert it to a file.


While I was working on the project, I had a collection of documents that I was scanning into the computer so I could shred the paper copies. However, since my project was not going to be ready to store these documents for some time, and I did not want to have the files sitting around on my computer or on DVD-R without encryption, I realized I could create a generic “FILE” object that would just store the file data until it was ready. I began storing my important documents in this manner in 2006 and now have over 3,500 files stored.


In January of 2007 I decided it would be nicer if the Objectify package had it’s own project on SourceForge, so I created an Objectify project. However, I have not completed the move so the CVS repository and the released packages are still under the New World OS project. The only thing I have in the Objectify project so far are the Bug and Feature Request Trackers.


I find it ironic that my initial goal was to eliminate the storing of data in files but currently that is the most developed function of the project. However, it is interesting to note that Objectify is inverted from other systems; instead of storing objects in files, it stores files in objects.


 


Notes:


 



  1. In early 2005 someone else wanted to use the EasyOS moniker on SourceForge. Since I was concentrating on New World OS by that time, I let them take it over. So the EasyOS project that is now on SourceForge has no relation to my project.

  2. I have tested the code on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Cygwin. I have started trying to get it to compile on Mac OS X but there were a couple of POSIX functions that are missing on OS X and I haven’t had time to work through it.






..


Complete Story

Frag 'em in your own backyard with Sauerbraten

If like first-person shooters, you'll love Sauerbraten. This open source game might not have the visual finesse of other FPSes, but what it lacks in the graphics department, Sauerbraten more than makes up for with its various single and multiplayer modes, including an experimental role-playing game mode, and a unique WYSIWYG in-game map editor. Sauerbraten blends the best of FPSes like Quake and Max Payne to give you a unique gaming experience.

..


Complete Story

HowTo: Install FFMpeg on Fedora Linux

FFMpeg is a complete and free Internet live audio and video broadcasting solution for Linux/Unix. It also includes a digital VCR. FFMpeg can encode in real time in many formats including MPEG1 audio and video, MPEG4, h263, ac3, asf, avi, real, mjpeg, and flash.

FFmpeg can generate a lot of different types of multimedia files with a variety of audio and video codecs inside. Sometimes these formats do not adhere to "accepted" specifications. Many open source multimedia playback applications have been specifically tuned to play all manner of multimedia files, no matter how incomplete or broken. However, certain widespread, proprietary multimedia applications, such as Microsoft Windows Media Player and Apple's QuickTime Player, are a little more rigid in the types of files they will accept.

FFMPEG Fedora Installation

Fedora repo supports FFMpeg. To install, simply issue

# yum -y install ffmpeg

FFMPeg Usage

# ffmpeg -i inputfile.ext outfile.mov
# ffmpeg -i inputfile.ext outfile.mp4
# ffmpeg -i inputfile.ext outfile.mpg


To convert a movie file into a playable AVI file
# ffmpeg -i inputfile.ext -vcodec msmpeg4 -vtag MP43 -acodec mp3 outfile.avi

To use Microsoft MPEG-4v2 video
# ffmpeg -i inputfile.ext -vcodec msmpeg4v2 -acodec mp3 outfile.avi

To create MPEG file with MPEG-1 video and MP2 audio.
# ffmpeg -i inputfile.ext outfile.mpg

To convert FLV to MPG using ffmpeg
# ffmpeg -i inputfile.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320x240 outputfile.mpg

Yes, you can use MPEG to convert video files from one format to another format, with a different video quality and pass. File output from FFMpeg was also tested to work with Windows Media player, Apple Video Player, Quick Time players and more.

That is all folks.

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