On top of the busiest time we’ve ever encountered, we need to move from our current digs. On September 18th, we are having a recycle day out at our shop in Lakeway. We tentatively have a Boy Scout troop coming out to help but that is not yet nailed down. If you have some time to come out and help us sort through the mountain of stuff to get recycled, I would appreciate your participation. So, as you all know, this is going to cost us some money. Instead of just posting our current needs, we’ve decided to open a store of sorts to raise the money we need. We have some cool and useful stuff and more will be added in the next two weeks.
Open Source Pixels
Every Pixel Counts
HeliOS Store Opens to Fund The HeliOS Project
Backports now an official Debian repository
Every Linux distribution has to strike a balance between being up to date and being stable, between including the latest versions of software packages and retaining better tested, more mature versions. Fedora, for example, is known for having the very latest software, whilst Debian GNU/Linux has a reputation for being a particularly stable distribution, with the software included in each new release already well cured.
Linux DWG – Bricscad v10
It happened today… Bricsys released the official version of bricscad V10. No long in beta stage is now commercial with version 10.6.3-2 (windows version is 10.4.18-1). So now Linux users have a CAD software capable of handling DWG file format. Now there is no excuse to stay with windows just because you need Autocad. Bricscad is a very capable software and in many case can do better.
* How to Secure Windows *
In previous OS News articles, I’ve
claimed that mature computers up to ten years old can be
refurbished and made useful. My last article
identified and evaluated
different ways to refurbish these
computers.
One approach is to keep the existing Windows install and clean it
up. This has the advantage of retaining the Windows license and
software, the
installed
applications, and the existing drivers. But it
takes some work. In this article we’ll see what this entails. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article…
Diaspora coming
It’s probably not true to say that everybody hates Facebook. But there are many millions (of the hundreds of millions that use the site) that claim to hate Facebook’s cavalier approach to privacy and founder Mark Zuckerberg’s equally vague approach to the future of our privacy. There are even groups dedicated to encouraging users to leave Facebook (some on Facebook itself, ironically).
Google Talk #1 – All about App Engine with Google’s Fred Sauer
In the first of a series of three exclusive interviews about Google’s latest and greatest developer tools, Linux User & Developer talks App Engine with Google’s Fred Sauer…
Graesslin: Driver dilemma in KDE workspaces 4.5
Martin Graesslin looks
at problems with the interaction between KWin and some graphics drivers.
“Now that I have explained all our checks we did to ensure a smooth
user experience, I want to explain how it could happen that there are
regressions in 4.5. In 4.5 we introduced two new features which require
OpenGL Shaders: the blur effect and the lanczos filter. Both are not hard
requirements. Blur effect can easily be turned off by disabling the effect
and the lanczos filter is controlled by the general effect level settings
which is also used for Plasma and Oxygen animations. Both new features
check for the required extensions and get only activated iff the driver
claims support for it. So everything should be fine, shouldn’t it?
Apparently not when it comes to the free graphics drivers (please note and
remember: we do not see such problems with the proprietary NVIDIA
driver!).” (Thanks to Jos Poortvliet)
Five tips for a smooth Linux migration
We’ve talked a little bit before about ways to bring your new Linux users along so that their migration experience is positive. Here are a few more tips to help make the switch to Linux a pain-free experience for you and for them.
Linux Server Monitoring with Bijk
How you can monitor your server and performs usage? With Bijk you get online 30 graphs about Load, CPU, memory, traffic, Apache, PostreSQL and others with Alerts. Bijk can be used on Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RedHat and with Cloud providers.
Monday’s security updates
Debian has updated smbind (sql
injection).
Fedora has updated pam_mount (F13, F12:
arbitrary code execution), libhx (F13, F12:
arbitrary code execution), F13: python
(multiple vulnerabilities), and F12:
sblim-sfcb (arbitrary code execution).
Mandriva has updated lvm2 (privilege
escalation).
Pardus has updated phpmyadmin
(cross-site scripting) and mysql (multiple
vulnerabilities).