In this lesson in the Clueless Computer User series, Ed Hurst will discuss more about stability and interface issues. A popular buzzword these days is "interface". That's just a fancy word implying that two or more people are face to face. In actual practice, it usually means anything but face to face. It's a means of interacting with another. You are said to "interface" by some means. So it is with computers.

The software maker has launched a pilot program in which some visitors to the main Windows download page are being asked to let the software maker check to see whether their copy of the operating system is licensed.

If you're as confused about the definition of Enterprise Software as Microsoft and the Department of Justice, then this article from Tom Adelstein at O'Reilly's Linux DevCenter should clarify things.

Here is an easy to read step-by-step guide utilizing a script based method for Debian GNU/Linux installations. It's designed to be a starting point for Linux user groups or interested individuals to assist with all manner of Debian installations. It requires the new Debian installer and the included script results in a Gnome desktop. Customizing this simple script method allows for an endless diversity of packages and various system designs while maintaining 100% compatability with Debian repositories.

Many programmers are moving to Eclipse, the popular, open source development environment. For programmers familiar with Borland's free JBuilder X Foundation edition, this article starts with a brief comparison of both IDEs' features, ease of use, and stability, and then demonstrates essential tasks in Eclipse -- and shows how they differ from JBuilder -- so you can decide if Eclipse is right for you.

This article looks at how to create a structure for building and distributing applications, including heavily customized versions, and a simple way of disseminating the applications among a number of machines, manually or automatically, as easily as possible.

Martin Taylor recently marked his one-year anniversary as Microsoft Corp.'s chief Linux strategist. Taylor, whose official title is general manager of platform strategy, recently spoke with Computerworld about his first year in that job. This is Part 1 of that interview.

C/C++ parsers, such as libxml2 or Xerces C++ have entered the scene, and so have their Perl extensions. Perl XML folks have developed Perl SAX, a Perlish counterpart of Java SAX interface. Currently, CPAN contains several parsing modules. This article compares the performance of five free PerlSAX 2 parsers available from CPAN. Older XML::Parser is also included to serve as a baseline.

In the third installment of the Stealth Desktop series about Slackware Linux, Eduardo Sánchez builds upon the previous steps of Part I and Part II. Continuing where those parts left off, he introduces the subjects of user, font and printer management in Slackware.

Some weeks ago, I heard of a new german distribution of Linux especially for older hardware, which is called 'DeLi Linux'. I own an rather old Notebook with a Pentium 90, so I ordered a CD of DeLi for use on my old Notebook. After some days, I hold the CD in my hands.

Novell Inc. announced on Monday a new initiative called the Porting and Migration Network to help customers and partners move existing applications to SUSE Linux.

Adding to the vunerabilities found a few days ago, more have been discovered and posted. These additional potential exploits were discovered by the same person who found the first one posted.

This article reviews tips for porting 32-bit software from Linux IA32 to Linux PowerPC. Linux PowerPC also provides a platform for the development and deployment of 32 bit applications that would benefit from a 64 bit environment. This article shares the best practices for porting Intel applications to 64 bit Linux on power. In both casses, PowerPC derived chips offers industry leading performance and provides a world class hardware platform for the deployment and migration of Intel 32 bit and 64 bit apps to the Linux PowerPC environment.

Absoft Corporation has announced the availability of Visual Numerics’ IMSL Fortran Numerical Library version 5.0 bundled with its new high performance Pro Fortran compiler suite version 9.0 for Windows which was also announced today, along with MATFOR 3.