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.

Yesterday, a co-worker of mine and I had a lengthy discussion about this article posted on OSNews awhile back. My past writing about Linux has centered on general usability and sensible defaults, but his contention was that Linux is the Linux kernel and that anything beyond that is the responsibility of the distribution. The conversation took an interesting turn. Read on for more.

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.

Today, AnandTech brings you the second part of the series, which focuses on Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 and how it compares to the Linux-based MythTV.

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.

LinuxTimes.net has published a review of Xandros 2.5 Deluxe Edition with screenshots.

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.

There's August's BSD eZine which includes articles such as: DHCP server with Dynamic DNS, FreeBSD Documentation: An Interview with Tom Rhodes, SSH - The Secure Shell: An overview and Cross compiling from FreeBSD to Windows.

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.

MontaVista Software has announced the immediate availability of an early access version of MontaVista Linux Professional Edition (Pro), based on the latest 2.6 Linux kernel.

Ubuntu Linux 4.1, released yesterday, is the one of the first distributions to ship with the newly released Gnome 2.8. OSDir has taken a number of screenshots. PPCNerds.org also features an Ubuntu slideshow. We featured an interview with Jeff Waugh of the Ubuntu team yesterday.

Gentoo Linux is the BSD of GNU/Linux distributions; it's elegant and customizable and you know exactly what you're getting when you install it. If you do it right, Gentoo is usually faster than your average GNU/Linux distro because everything can be compiled with higher compiler optimizations. The 2004.2 edition of Gentoo Linux lacks the improvements I had hoped to see, but this is still the best community GNU/Linux distribution for desktop tinkerers. Some even say that it makes a good server, too. Linux.com has the full review.

Microsoft is refining its "Get the Facts" Linux attack, taking specific aim at Red Hat, Novell and IBM rather than the broader movement around the open-source operating system.

The Debian-based Ubuntu Linux was unveiled today and a preview release is available for download. Ubuntu uses Gnome 2.8, kernel 2.6.8.1, OOo 1.1.2 and comes with a text-based, but dead-easy, installation procedure. Ubuntu has disabled the root user (sudo is used, same way as OSX does it) and it endorses the "less is more" philosophy. There are still bugs on the preview release, but the team welcomes feedback via their mailing list. Read more for an interview with team member Jeff Waugh (also of Debian and Gnome fame). Screenshots also included, and more are here to be found.