Linux Archive

"If there's a real bottom line here, the one thing I'm clear on is that I haven't found it yet, but the questions raised have been more interesting that the answers -- so more help would be welcomed." Read the article at LinuxInsider.

A Practical Guide to Basic Security in Linux Production Environments - This article is a practical step-by-step guide for securing Linux production systems. It shows how to meet basic security requirements for Linux systems that need to pass security audits. This guide also discusses some Linux security steps that cannot be found in any book at the time of this writing. If you have been assigned to come up with a corporate Linux Security Standard, then you should definitely read on.

The Linux server platform is becoming more varied -- and more capable, according to a recent report by IDC. The report noted that Linux is already well entrenched as a Web-centric server platform, in IT infrastructure roles and in the high-performance computing arena. In 2005, the report predicted, Linux will take on more workloads in the enterprise, such as hosting independent software vendor applications and databases.

At the end of the year here is a small gift to all game-fanatics out there: SAM Xmas Fun 2004, a game-collection for your pocket with around 40 games. Also the basic things for having fun with Linux are there: Firefox 1.0, Gaim 1.1, Xchat, Totem, Leafpad... all together on a 210mb mini cd. Check out OSDir.com's SAM Xmas Fun 2004 Screenshot tour.

The Linux kernel 2.6.10 was released, full details here.

The cluster, a collection of computers that work together, is an important concept in leveraging computing resources because of its ability to transfer workload from an overloaded system (or node) to another system in the cluster. This article explains how to set up a load-balancing Linux cluster using Knoppix-based LiveCDs.

Uber-popular Linux live CD Knoppix will split into a "lite" version, optimized for older computer, and a "maximum" version targetting newer machines, which contains more Debian packages.

The much awaited new preview of PCLinuxOS has been released: "PCLinuxOS Preview 8 comes with kernel 2.6.7 with udev support. KDE 3.3.2, OpenOffice.org 1.1.3, Firefox 1.0 with plugin support, Thunderbird 1.0, P2P filesharing for Kazza and Gnutella, and many more applications." Read more here. Also, check out the screenshot tour at OSDir.com.

I'm not upgrading my Fedora Core 2 machine to Core 3, even though the new version has been out for a couple of months. There's not anything wrong with FC3 itself, it's just that system upgrades are both a blessing and a curse.

Live Linux CDs are a simple concept with many possible uses. Here are 10 things you can do with a live Linux CD.

Standford University research team has found that Linux has fewer bugs than the competition using Coverity, a static source code analysis tool. Andrew Morton, one of the core developers says that the major bugs detected using this tool have already been fixed. It might be of interest that Linus Trovalds has developed a similar tool called sparse specifically for the Linux kernel which has proved itself to be pretty useful.

There's always a lot of excitement when a major Linux distribution has a new release - there's the clamour for the release notes and changelog, as well as the insatiable urge for screenshots and the search for the torrent for the ISOs. The release of Xandros Desktop 3.0 last week was no exception, with OS fanatics everywhere curious just what was in store. Read on for details.

MontaVista Software has announced the immediate availability of a MIPS evaluation Linux Support Package (LSP) for MontaVista Linux Professional Edition (Pro), based on the 2.6 Linux kernel and MontaVista Linux Professional Edition 3.1 applications and tools.

James Morris, one of the core SELinux developers has a blog entry detailing the evolution of SELinux and how it has worked so far including a recent major performance boost using RCU (Read Copy Update) code in the Linux kernel.