---------- Forwarded message ----------
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LinTux Newsletter - Saturday, Mar 28th, 2005
"Spreading the Spirit of Gnu/Linux"
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http://groups-beta.google.com/group/lintux
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For joining the newsletter, scroll to the bottom for details
I also request you to send in your comments and suggestions
regarding the newsletter to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF GNU/LINUX
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The Free Software Definition
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We maintain this free software definition to show clearly
what must be true about a particular software program for it
to be considered free software.
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To
understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in
"free speech," not as in "free beer." Free software is a
matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute,
study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it
refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the
software.
URL:
http://gnu.gnusoft.net/philosophy/free-sw.html
Site to visit this week.
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Interview with Hurd developer
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Marcus Brinkmann is a 29-year old free software developer
working on the Hurd and Hurd/L4 projects. On 3 February
Wikinerds Portal published an article giving details about
the first program executed on Hurd/L4 thanks to Brinkmann's
recent work on the process initialisation code. After the
article got slashdotted, NSK contacted Mr. Brinkmann and
asked him to provide an interview for the Wikinerds Portal.
Hurd is part of the GNU Project, which is sponsored by the
Free Software Foundation. Its name is actually a pair of
mutually recursive acronyms: Hurd means "Hird of
Unix-Replacing Daemons", while Hird expands to "Hurd of
Interfaces Representing Depth".
Hurd is a collection of servers running on top of a
microkernel, i.e. a minimalistic kernel. Hurd servers
implement functionality commonly found in other operating
systems, such as file system access, network protocols, et
cetera. The first functional protorype of Hurd used the GNU
Mach microkernel, and there is a binary distribution which
uses it: Debian GNU/Hurd....
Read Full:
http://portal.wikinerds.org/brinkmann-interview-mar2005
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Karamba, An attractive desktop!
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In the last couple of years, the development teams of the
various desktop environments, such as GNOME and KDE, have
made great strides in the right direction to making the
Linux desktop more attractive and visually pleasing. Just
with a standard KDE install, I get the occasional "Hey, that
looks nice" from friends. When I discovered a program named
Karamba for KDE a while back, that suddenly changed to
outright "Wow!"
SuperKaramba is an application that lets you place "themes"
on your desktop, somewhat similar to the Windows application
Samurize or Konfabulator for Mac OS X. But SuperKaramba
themes are like mini-applications that live in their own
windows on the desktop background, performing different
tasks....
Read Full at:
http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/03/15/1151204.shtm
l?tid=130
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Open source Mambo CMS succeeds admirably
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Managing even a medium-sized Web site can be a real
headache. If you are tired of manually managing content,
updating news, and keeping track of old items, then you need
a content management system -- software that makes it easy
to handle the mundane administrative duties of a Web site. A
good CMS lets you divide the task of posting content among
many relatively unskilled people. The Mambo CMS, released
under the GPL, is designed to handle the largest of Web
sites, and, in my experience, does so admirably.
I used Mambo 4.5.2 to set up a Web site for my university.
The site is used by teachers and students to keep track of
schedules, tests, and other information....
Read Full at:
http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/03/17/232024
3
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First Look: OpenOffice.org 2.0 Looks Good
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If you're thrifty and you use an office suite, it's hard not
to like OpenOffice.org, the open-source set of office
productivity tools. Version 1.0, which first appeared in
2002, does most things Microsoft Office can do (including
smoothly trade files with users of Word, Excel, or
PowerPoint). Plus it's free. So what's to improve in version
2.0?
OpenOffice.org 2.0, still in beta during my tests, adds a
database creation application similar to Microsoft Access.
But beyond that, many of the changes are small improvements
that are nice to have, but probably won't radically change
how you work. And in that way, OpenOffice.org is similar to
Microsoft Office, which hasn't made a change that's really
significant to most users in years.
In addition to Base, the database app, OpenOffice.org 2.0
includes a word processor, a spreadsheet application, a
presentation program, an app for creating mathematical
formulas, and a nifty drawing program much more powerful and
fun than Microsoft's Paint....
Read Full at:
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,120154,00.asp
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CLI Magic: One-liners
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Newcomers to Linux often feel overwhelmed by the number of
commands at their disposal. Frustration sets in when they
know what they wish to accomplish, but they do not have any
idea what command(s) they can use to get the job done. This
week's CLI Magic -- written by Jim Westbrook -- helps clear
away some of that excess one-liner at a time. Fortunately,
Linux provides a couple of utilitites which use a database
of the man pages to point them to an appropriate command or
provide a hint of what a command does....
Read Full at:
http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/03/14/1822201
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?????????????????????????????????????????????
For Readers in Pakistan...Free LAMP Training
?????????????????????????????????????????????
The Pakistan Software Export Board is going to hold a free
of cost LAMP training in four major cities of Pakistan i.e
Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi. A total of 480
people will be trained in all the four cities.
The target trainees are Network/system admins of public and
private organizations, IT faculty of universities and open
source entusiast students.
The idea is to produce a number of FOSS personnel in
organizations who after getting trained will help their
organizations migrate to open source, and to produce a
number of trainers who will train more people on LAMP, thus
creating a snowball effect.
Those interested in free trainings may get the detailed
Terms of reference and application forms downloded from:
htp://www.osc.org.pk/adverts
The last date to apply is 4th of April 2005.
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Review: SUSE LINUX 9.3 Professional
***********************************
All the buzz about the release of SUSE 9.3 Professional got
me excited. This very morning, I downloaded and installed
SUSE Linux 9.3 Professional beta 4. The installation is
similar to 9.2 though the screens seem crisper. It has
definitely had some work, as it will do an md5sum check on
the installation media to make sure it's not been corrupted.
Also, when Grub was installed, it recognized the other
bootable partitions. It put these partitions into the Grub
menu automatically. It did not do this in previous versions.
That's all I'm going to mention about the installation.
Instead, let's take a look at some of the changes you'll in
the newest version of SUSE when you are actually using it.
Almost all of the packages that come with SUSE 9.3 are new
versions. As a matter of fact, when I first fired up KDE
3.4, I must say, it was exhilarating. What a beautiful
sight. The default theme has changed in look, though not in
name. Here's a vanilla install with Konqueror open...
Read Full at:
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11878.html
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Banks eye bootable Linux CDs
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Australian company Cybersource says it's currently talking
to two domestic banks about providing Linux-based bootable
CDs to consumers to ensure Internet banking security.
The company yesterday released information about its Online
Banking Coastguard solution. Coastguard is based upon
Knoppix, a Linux distribution which boots entirely from CD
and is known for its automatic hardware detection features.
Cybersource has included Mozilla Firefox as the sole browser
for Internet banking.
"We've brought it to the attention of several banks, and are
in reasonably serious discussions with two of them," said
Rohan Tronson, Cybersource's Coastguard product manager.
Although he wouldn't say which companies were involved,
Tronson acknowledged his company was talking to both
national and regional players....
Read Full at:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/0,2000061744,39185833,
00.htm
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Ingres and Open Source - a success story
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I have commended Computer Associates decision to take the
Ingres database into the open source community.
Now, I dare say that at some point CA will tell me all about
its "open source challenge" and how successful that has been
in developing new facilities for Ingres. And they will also
tell me about how many downloads there have been (though I
am cynical about the utility of such a figure). But this is
not about any of that but about one company, Datallegro,
which has chosen to adopt Ingres as its database....
Read Full at:
http://www.it-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=12637
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GNU/Linux user groups..
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This page contains a list of the useful user groups that
help in spreading Free/Libre and Open Source Software. Would
really appreciate any help in updating and correcting this
list and keeping it current. Let's try to network all the
'little' GNU/LUGs, who badly need your support to grow. FN
(Frederick Noronha in Goa)
Read Full:
http://wikiwikiweb.de/LugsList
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Linux Kernel Security, Again
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It's a sad day when an ancient fork bomb attack can still
take down most of the latest Linux distributions. While
investigating some reports of recent Unix compromises, I ran
into a message from the SecurityFocus Incidents mailing list
that was forwarded to me by the moderator, Daniel Hanson. It
was a lengthy post detailing the compromise of a Linux
machine. The post contained an awkward IRC-based discussion
between the server administrator and the guy who had broke
into the machine.
Reading through this discussion, I discovered the following
exchange which immediately piqued my interest...
Read Full at:
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/308?ref=rssdebia
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Zeta OS is rising from BeOS ashes
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Today, several years after BeOS developer Be Inc. went out
of business, the small German company yellowTAB GmbH is
getting ready to release Zeta 1.0, a successor to BeOS.
BeOS was a lighweight but full-fledged operating system
designed from the ground up to be a desktop OS with strong
multimedia capabilities. Its claim to fame was the real-time
response of its graphical interface, even on low-powered
hardware. Its minimalistic approach made it easy to use even
for beginners. Its database-like BFS file system with
indexed attributes made file searches a breeze. All of this
in a system that could boot in 10 to 15 seconds on most
hardware, and that was as stable as a rock....
Read Full at:
http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/03/17/177217
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Arch Linux: Why It Rocks
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2003 was the year with Gentoo written all over it in the
Linux universe. Last year was Ubuntu's & MEPIS'. I believe
that Arch Linux's year is the current one. Read more for a
comparison of Arch to existing distributions, and why we
think it rocks and where we think it still requires some
work.
Arch is an i686-optimized Linux distributions based upon the
ideas of CRUX and Slackware. It incorporates their
stability, speed and most of all, their keep-it-simple
philosophy...
Read Full at:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10047
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Linux gains steam in China's OS mart
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When US software giant Microsoft partnered, on March 10,
with Founder Technology, Tsinghua Tongfang and TCL, three of
China's leading computer makers, to bundle its Windows
operating system, to promote the use of legal operating
systems and give customers greater added value, the absence
of the country's biggest computer maker, Lenovo Group,
prompted many questions from the audience.
Microsoft explained more domestic computer makers will join
the programme in the future, and that Lenovo was busy with
consolidation issues that resuled from its December
acquisition of IBM's PC unit.
However, one question remains: Will Lenovo increase its use
of Linux's operating systems (OS), which compete with
Microsoft's Windows software?..
Read Full at:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-03/24/content_
427686.htm
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"The GNU GPL Stood Up In Court,"
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Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation,
contends that the FSF's views have been misrepresented
elsewhere by Maureen O'Gara and hastens to set the record
straight: "The idea that the GNU General Public License
would never stand up in court is sheer fantasy," he writes.
"The GNU GPL stood up in court," he adds - citing a case
involving Harald Welte, developer of netfilter.
Richard Stallman writes: Maureen O'Gara's review in Linux
Business Week of Larry Rosen's book misrepresents the Free
Software Foundation's views, when it says we criticized
Rosen for "recognizing...licenses other than the GPL"....
Read Full at:
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/48833.htm
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Novell's internal migration
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Why Novell's internal migration to Linux desktops is a
landmark story.
SALT LAKE CITY -- There have been so many announcements, so
much activity, such a hurried pace to the Brainshare 2005
conference that I think many may have overlooked the big
story. It was thrown out in an almost offhand manner during
Novell CEO Jack Messman's keynote address on Monday:
Longtime Microsoft partner Novell is migrating all of its
own 6,000 Windows desktops to Linux....
Read Full:
http://business.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/03/23/175522
2
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Blogs for FLOSS enthusiasts...
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Sayamindu Dasgupta of Kolkata recently told me that they run
a blogging service for FLOSS enthusiasts in India at
http://blogs.randomink.org/
If you have a point to make regarding the world of FLOSS
(Free/Libre and Open Source Software) and would like to do
so via a blog, go and claim space of your own there. It's
free!
Taken from Little League, posted by Frederick Noronha (FN)
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GNU/Linux User Counter
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Those who are proud to say that they use linux and also wish
to be counted as a linux user please register your self at
http://counter.li.org/
PS. Registration is free and I have already registered, my
registration number is: #379305
:: Thanks to Anant Shrivastava,
Moderator (Linux Gurus) for the link ::
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Events/Meetings this week
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
::: Planning a event/ holding a meeting regarding
gnu/linux, send me the info and the details at:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] and it published in here :::
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READERS COMMENTS
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No Comments this week
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Quick Links to Gnu/Linux Groups
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1. Linux User Groups, Mangalore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-mangalore/
2. Linux Gurus, Bhopal
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux_gurus/
3. GNU/Linux Users Group, Hubli
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linuxhubli
4. Freedom Computing, (Documentation Group for Gnu/Linux)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/floss
Moderator's of various Gnu/Linux Groups are requested to
send in the URL of their groups so that it can be added in
here.
CopyLeft 2004, Nithin Kamath.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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