Want to try a real Java + Linux based desktop? JD4X and ZerahStar are joining efforts to produce a next generation desktop. It is still in very early stages of development but worth the try.
Web services and service-oriented architectures continue to move into the mainstream. With IBM Rational XDE Developer v2003 — .NET Edition and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 to support you, there really aren't any excuses left to avoid exploring Web services. Start using them quickly and effectively through hands-on exercises. You'll be happy to see how easy it is to model and generate .NET XML Web services.
Remembering all the logins and passwords to all the services and systems you've got access to is pretty hard to do nowadays. Many people use the same login and password for multiple sites and systems. That won't improve security. One of the IT buzzwords is SSO (Single Sign-on). Most SSO systems are hard to setup and will only provide SSO to the systems of one company. It is possible to easily provide worldwide single sing-on.
Gnumeric is intended to be a drop in replacement for proprietary spreadsheets. It imports your existing Excel, 1-2-3, Applix, Sylk, XBase Quattro Pro, Dif, Plan Perfect, and Oleo files among others. The latest version 1.4.0 brings some major new features including:
The dmidecode project provides the means to learn exactly what claims your BIOS is making about your hardware. Strange as it might seem, it's useful information, even when it's not 100% reliable.
In a move dear to the hearts of conspiracy theorists, Microsoft has taken a minority position in Vintela Inc, a sister company of the SCO Group by virtue of the Canopy Group, their common investor.
The Fedora project was urged to be more community oriented and the editor showed an example of how community involvement helps to reduce Fedora boot time. Also, some intro on Sun's Solaris 10 over at LWN.
Novell hints at a conference all that Sun may not be able to open up solaris so easily since Novell claims copyrights and patents remain with Novell. Is this preventing the development of what may be the most powerful open source operating system in existance?
A company named Tech Source has stepped up to create an open source 2D/3D graphics card. The project has an open mailing list and a spec proposal for the final card can be downloaded here. This project is a groundbreaking effort at creating truely open hardware, and is great chance for everyone who is interested in 2D/3D programming to see how a modern graphics card works.
This article will show you how to encrypt the filesystem and mount it with ACL (Access Control Lists), which gives you rights beyond the traditional read (r), write (w), and execute (x) permissions for the three user groups "file", "owner", and "other".
'After several months, amidst various delays and other issues, this author has had the opportunity, at long last, to install and evaluate the latest iteration of Lycoris' Desktop LX, Amethyst 1.4.' Read the rest here.
The Smart Package Manager project has the ambitious objective of creating smart and portable algorithms for solving adequately the problem of managing software upgrading and installation. This tool works in all major distributions, and will bring notable advantages over native tools currently in use (APT, APT-RPM, YUM, URPMI, etc).
"What do you want from a desktop operating system? The real criteria are stability, package management, hardware compatibility, and the people behind the software, the community. For its superiority in those areas, I made Debian my workstation OS."Read the article at NewsForge.
