A U.S. government study that reports there were three times more software vulnerabilities in the Linux/Unix platform than in the Windows platform during 2005 not only is drawing criticism from the open-source community but also has prompted questions from security authorities.
Arudius is a Linux live CD with tools for information assurance (penetration testing, vulnerability analysis, etc). It is based on Slackware (Zenwalk) for i386 systems and targets the information security audience. It is released under the GNU GPL and contains only open-source software. Arudius uses Fluxbox as its default window manager but most of the tools included in the distributions are command-line. The distribution was developed from scratch using vanilla Minislack install and Linux Live scripts by the creator of SLAX.
It's official; Zack Rusin, a lead developer of KDE, has stated in his journal that the upcoming KDE 4 will be able to run and display Dashboard widgets much in the same way that Mac OS X 10.4 can. He writes:
I finally got most the implementation of the HTML Canvas element for KHTML finished. It's in the kdelibs-js branch in SVN. After George/Maks merge their other changes we'll merge it to HEAD. I'm planning to add full OSX Dashboard compatibility layer for Plasma (hence why I've spent most of the day yesterday on implementing the Canvas element).
There is a curious lack in the Linux community -- the number of community-led Linux distributions for commodity mobile phone hardware is zero. There are PDAs for which you can get a GSM/GPRS SD card; there are mobile phones, such as the Motorola A780, that are based on Linux; and there is even the OpenEZX project, which aims to take Motorola's original kernel source for the E680 and A780 Linux phones as the basis for an entirely free-software phone distribution.
The recent discussions on KDE versus other Linux desktops - accidentally started by KDE-user Linus Torvalds - showed an interesting new development in the eternal debate. First of all it didn’t come as a surprise that Linus uses KDE, after all Fritz Elfert made it very clear back in 1996 that KDE stands for “Kernel-Hackers’ Desktop Environment”, when Kalle and the German IT press still pushed “Kalle Dalheimer Experience”.
So why should you read this article? Why, indeed, should I write it? My motive is to help remove two obstacles to the wider adoption of free and open source software. Those obstacles are:
The Linux operating system has infiltrated foreign governments with the stealthy prowess of a secret agent. Public sector agencies on virtually every continent have put the open source operating system to the test in an effort to cut costs and increase security. Yesterday, Novell announced that Switzerland plans to add penguin power to its government with SUSE Linux. After an arduous IT selection process, the Swiss Federal Government determined that Novell's SUSE Linux distribution was the best choice for over 3,000 government servers.
No matter which Linux distribution you choose, there are at least 10 things you do to properly prepare the operating system for connection to the Internet. Linux, like Microsoft Windows, is simply a computer operating system but Linux in itself is not a magic wand that can be waved and make all sorts of computing problems disappear. While Windows has its own set of problems, so too does Linux. There is no such thing as a perfect or completely secure computer operating system.
One very interesting aspect of Linux on the desktop is the popularity of each different distribution. Each version has a number of fundamental similarities with the others, but certain changes are made to each in order to differentiate them from the others and to enable that version to fulfill the niche for which it was designed. These differences are not always tremendous, but they are enough to allow people to make a definitive choice between one version and next.
There's more to SUSE Linux than simply installing it and going to work. To get the most from the operating system, you'll probably want to do some post-install fine tuning. This article by Jem Matzan explains how to: add download sources to YaST; install the Mozilla Thunderbird email client; add support for Java, Flash, Acrobat, Windows Media, MP3s, and RealMedia; play DVDs -- and more. It serves as a useful supplement to Steven J. Rosen's excellent how-to, "Installing SUSE Linux 10 on a Laptop," recently published here on DesktopLinux.com.
