Linux

So I've had one of those usb keys for nearly a year now and what's on it? Nothing... so I decided to install Linux on it. 256MB should be more than enough and I would be able to boot it anywhere, use it for troubleshooting and impress my friends and co-workers. Upon doing a little bit of googling I found several distributions that aim to allow you to run a full-fledged Linux distribution on your usb key. Most of them are based on stripped down versions of existing distributions, most prominently Knoppix. Others are built from scratch.

Linux distributor Novell SuSE released a security advisory with a severity rating of nine out of 10 last week warning of a flaw in Linux kernel 2.6.. The bug affects the company's enterprise and consumer products-- SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and SuSE Linux Professional 9.1.

Roman Drahtmueller, head of Linux security at SuSE Linux, said this version of the kernel is available to all Linux distributers, but as SuSE is one of the few commercial distributions to actually use the 2.6 kernel it was a priority for them to resolve the security hole quickly.

Linux vendors have been hit by two fresh security bugs, affecting a widely used graphics decoder and the Gaim instant-messaging client.

Separately, Red Hat, the biggest Linux developer, said attackers have begun targeting Red Hat users with an email-based scam similar to methods commonly used to target Windows.

The flaws in Gaim and libtiff, used by many Linux graphics programs to decode tiff images, follow a series of serious bugs patched last week. The earlier flaws affected Linux's libpng, Xpdf and Cups components.

Melbourne-based Linux and open source software provider Cybersource has launched what it describes as an internet-safe computer package for home users via resellers, with a similar business product in the wings.

Ron Fabre, product manager at Cybersource, said the open source-derived software provider was offering a specialised PC, dubbed the Safe Internet Computer (SafeIC), that would make web browsing and email use almost completely safe from malware.

DPMS is used to communicate between your monitor and computer to make your computer turn off your monitor when you have been neglecting it for a given period of time. Recently I have been surprised to find out how many people don't seem to have DPMS setup on their Linux Desktops and it seems to be partially just cause they don't know how. So lets fix that.

Advances in desktop Linux are developing along two trend lines -- one for adoption and the other for innovation. The rate of adoption for Linux shows steady growth at a constant rate. However, technological advances can have an unpredictable impact on adoption -- and cause exponential growth.

This article shows how to access a non-booting Linux system with a Knoppix CD, get read-write permissions on configuration files, create and manage partitions and filesystems, and copy files to various storage media and over the network. You can use Knoppix for hardware and system configuration detection and for creating and managing partitions and filesystems. You can do it all from Knoppix's excellent graphical utilities, or from the command line.

Linus Torvalds [pronounced LEE-nus] started a revolution of sorts in the computer industry when he created the Linux operating system and decided to share it with fellow programmers on the Internet.
He discussed via e-mail his move to Portland, the state of Linux and Microsoft.

The Ministry of Finance in Denmark has implemented an open-source project to simplify data exchange between systems. The data-exchange system uses open-source application server JBoss running on Red Hat Linux. It transmits 1.5 megabits of data per second between around 400 public institutions and the ministry, according to a Computer Science Corporation (CSC) report on open source.

Peter Henningsen, the data-exchange project manager at the Ministry of Finance, said the open-source combination was chosen over Microsoft's systems integration application BizTalk Server.

Rsync is a command line utility traditionally used in synchronizing files between two computers, but rsync can also be used as an effective backup tool. This article explain how to use rsync to backup your computer to a drive attached to your system. You can use a removable drive, such as an external USB hard drive, so that you can store the backups in a safe place away from your working environment.