MadPenguin reviews SimplyMEPIS, and concludes: "The bottom line here is when reviewing a desktop Linux candidate, I expect to have a certain amount of functionality at hand, and a certain amount of polish. SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3 lacks both in my opinion. If you're looking for a fundamental installation and don't mind spending a bunch of time fixing/adjusting things that normally would have been done for you already, MEPIS might be for you. If you're looking for a desktop that pretty much works out of the box, handles removable media with grace, and isn't going to rob you of productive time, then I'd recommend sticking with something like Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva, or SUSE."

"Anyone who has been following the tech headlines lately has had no choice but to find themselves immersed in news and speculation about the ultramobile PCs. After weeks of rampant speculation about the Origami Project and news streaming in from an unusually exciting Cebit expo, consumers have been introduced to this new form factor and have finally received some definite answers about what to expect."

"One of the most novel and differentiating features of a UNIX system is its command line. With just a few keystrokes, including a bit of 'glue', you can use the command line to combine a finite set of UNIX utilities into innumerable, impromptu data transforms."

"This article shows how I created a jail under FreeBSD 5. Though FreeBSD 6.0 has come out since I wrote this article, the strategy should remain the same. I'll update the article with any changes should anything be different."

It's official, boys and girls: it's easier to kick in a door when it's open. "A test has revealed that a Linux server is far less likely to be compromised. In fact, unpatched Red Hat and SuSE servers were not breached at all during a six-week trial, while the equivalent Windows systems were compromised within hours. However, patching does make a difference. Patched versions of Windows fared far better, remaining untouched throughout the test, as did the Red Hat and Suse deployments."

"Switch from one operating system to another - without manual intervention - by following these step-by-step instructions for enabling a dual-boot machine. Duplicate this setup for running both Linux and Windows on your own machine with the scripts provided with this article."

"Fans of open source software have been buzzing since Linus Torvalds, creator of the popular Linux operating system, indicated he wouldn't adopt a new version of the license under which Linux is distributed. Torvalds' opinion matters because his program is by far the most popular open source program in the world. In an interview via e-mail with Forbes, Torvalds discusses GPLv3, digital rights management and sharks with laser beams. "From where I'm standing, says that you suddenly can't use the software in certain 'evil ways' (where evil is defined by the FSF--it doesn't actually cover the James Bond kind of evil, but if you can see Richard Stallman as a less dashing James Bond, it would be that kind of evil)."

At CeBIT today, Microsoft unveiled an updated version of their 'ribbon' user interface, used in Office 2007. They even set up a special page for it. Jensen Harris of Microsoft explains more about it on his blog. On a related note, this article goes a little deeper into the OpenOffice.org vs. MS Office debate.

"Real Interfaces Visualizer technology is an easy-to-use GUI multi-platform system for Java programmers to assemble and manage complex, interaction-enabled, three-dimensional user interfaces. Version 1.1 includes addition of support for nested matrices along with the capability of cell spanning in all three directions."

Samsung will enter the US computer market in April as the launch partner for Microsoft's new UltraMobile PC or 'Origami' platform. Launched this morning at the CeBit technology show in Hannover Germany, this smaller tablet PC fits between hand-held Portable Media Centers and more traditional tablet/notebook computers. Samsung's unit, scheduled to go on sale in April, is expected to cost under $1000 . There's a batch of photos of the devices too. In addition, the 3rd video on the Origami website is also up.

Yellow Dog Linux version 4.1, which has been available directly from Terrasoft Solutions since early January, is now available for free download from their various mirrors. This is essentially a recompile of Fedora Core 4 specifically for PowerPC's, with extra polished support for Apple's Macs.

"OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 is available today. This release is recommended for everyone. It contains some new features, fixes many small bugs, and resolves numerous issues. The community have further added import filters for Quattro Pro 6 and Microsoft Word 2. As well, other import filters have been improved and it is now easier to use mail merge. Integration with the KDE address book is now possible. The appearance has also been enhanced, and for Linux users, there are new icon sets for KDE and GNOME."

"Hard disks tend to be one of the weakest points in today's machines. If you can afford it, RAID setups will address the problem. And if you cannot afford it, you probably cannot afford a NAS or a SAN either. The poor man's solution is to regularly back up the information from one disk to another. Of course if your disk dies between two backups, you lose. der Mouse is a Canadian open source developer who produced a bunch of valuable software ranging from anti-spam tools to a PPPoE implementation. At the BSDCan 2005 conference, he presented an innovative solution to hard disk replication. In this interview, der Mouse explains his idea and how he implemented it to us."

"We recently received an email asking for a 'What Is Java' entry on the O'Reilly Network What Is site. Who could possibly not know what Java is in 2006? After ten years of books, websites, and conferences, doesn't everyone know what Java is? Apparently not. After all, things have changed. For every dusty definition that speaks of applets and Just-In-Time compilers, there are new directions and new realities that have settled in, understood by many, yet not always completely documented."