Secure Startup is primarily designed to prevent laptop thieves and other unauthorized users with physical access to a computer from getting access to the data on the system. Secure Startup uses a chip called the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, which offers protected storage of encryption keys, passwords and digital certificates. Vista uses this capability to verify that a PC has not been tampered with when it starts up and to protect data through encryption.

"In this interview, Warren explains the secret to his distro's rapid and widespread proliferation. Give desktop customers what they want: a simple, reliable set of applications that are easy to acquire, install, and use. Give it away for free. Always."

In this short interview, Ubuntu Linux founder and space tourist Mark Shuttleworth discusses the intended users of Ubuntu, why he chose to base it on Debian, and what the future holds for Linux on the desktop. Ubuntu is growing rapidly - and Shuttleworth is the man at the controls.

Linus has released 2.6.13 after a longer testing period and committed to improving the release cycle by merging in the major changes within the first two weeks for 2.6.14 and above as discussed before in kernel summit recently.

Syllable 0.5.7 has been released. You can read the changelog here, and the download locations are here. "The biggest change in this release: everything has been recompiled against the new libc, and we have broken binary compatability through the removal of all the old libgui/libatheos/libsyllable versions. There are also some new drivers, new GUI classes, new bug fixes, and no doubt, new bugs."

This seems to be a sensitive question for some people, particularly at Sun Microsystems. While IBM stated this week they had increased their market share over last year's, Sun also had its own press release this week claiming that it is the number one Unix platform server vendor in the world, in both revenue and unit shipments. It turns out they are both right.

Trying to locate an unresolved plug-in dependency can be strenuous and time-consuming. Almost every plug-in depends on a bunch of other plug-ins, and those plug-ins, in turn, may depend on many more. This article shows you how to resolve plug-in dependencies more quickly by automating their discovery.

The Debian administration website has a nice introduction to using CFEngine for managing a whole LAN in three parts. The first part introduces the engine, the second part explains what you can do using CFEngine, and the final part describes how to setup a client-server setup to allow a whole LAN to be managed centrally.

The first Live-CD based on Debian GNU/kFreeBSD has appeared. Its name is Ging (for Ging Is Not Ging) and it includes a GNOME 2.10 desktop, Abiword, and a complete toolchain with gcc 4.0.

After two years of active development, we are proud to announce the immediate availability of the free MorphOS 3D Update pack. This pack brings Warp3D and OpenGL(R) API compatibility to a whole new range of hardware including 3dfx Voodoo and ATI Radeon.

Recently the eccentric security researcher Michal Zalewski published his first book, entitled Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks. Because the book is everything except a security manual, ONLamp's Federico Biancuzzi chose to interview Michal and learn more about his curious approach to information security. Among other things, they discussed the need for randomness, how a hacker mind works, unconventional uses for search engines such as Google, and applying AI to security tools.

A bug in Apple's Safari leaves it vulnerable to crashing from an animated image. All webkit apps are vulnerable, even rss readers. This comes after Internet Explorer and Firefox had vulnerabilities due to pictures. Why is it that images cause browsers so many problems?

"Version 1.2 is the third official release of the Gentoo-based VidaLinux OS (VLOS). The changes and enhancements to this edition are significant, but not good enough to save this conceptually astute operating system from failure. VidaLinux 1.2 is nice to play with, but don't expect a comfortable, complete desktop experience a la SUSE or Mandriva." Linux.com has the details. My Take: Tested VLOS the other day, and while it may be not be perfect yet, it's definitely on the way to being an attractive and usable system.

An excerpt fom the book "Nifty Utilities to Hack Mac OS X Tiger" has an overview of OS X apps like TinkerTool, Carbon Copy Cloner, BatChmod, Memory stick, and others, that help you tweak apps like Safari, adjust and monitor memory status, bring the world of Unix file ownership and permissions over to the Mac, and more.