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29th May 2005
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Linux and Open Source News for 28th May 2005

Suse Download

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Source: slax

A special modification of the SLAX live CD, Popcorn Edition, has been released after a week of beta testing. From the changelog: "Initial release of SLAX Popcorn edition, a 124MB live CD with the XFce desktop; contains Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, XMMS clone, Gaim and AbiWord; doesn't contain


  popularity

Source: pcbsd

Is a Linux-compatible BSD system possible? If your are interested, just take a look at the recently released PC-BSD 0.7: "A special PC-BSD package was uploaded today for Linux Binary support. This package allows you to run Linux binaries / programs on your PC-BSD system, and is required



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Source: Shell Extension City


Source: Slashdot Org latest news headlines

ValourX writes "NewsForge (part of OSTG, like Slashdot) has a review of a mouse that is powered by RFID (and yes, it works with Linux). It's cordless and uses no batteries -- you just have to keep the mouse within 2 inches of the mousepad for it to work. What else could be powered by RFID?"


Source: Slashdot Org latest news headlines

Gary W. Longsine writes "Security Focus describes device drivers as an untapped source of buffer overflows, posing substantial risk not typically considered as part of a standard risk assessment. The security risks of device drivers on both Windows and Linux, including network (remotely exploitable) and hardware drivers (typically only locally exploitable) are discussed in the article. I've noticed that software you wouldn't expect sometimes installs a device driver component. I can understand this as a component of an antivirus or host based firewall, but it seems to be an oddly common design pattern on Windows, which clearly poses substantial risk."


Source: geeknews


Source: OSNews

A HOWTO on GIT patch management software that replaces Bitkeeper has been published on the Linux Kernel mailing list.


Source: O'Reilly Safari

An indispensable guide for every Linux administratorInstant access to precise, step-by-step solutions for every essential Linux administration taskFrom basic configuration and troubleshooting to advanced security and optimizationIf you're responsible for delivering results with Linux, Linux ® Quick Fix Notebook brings together all the step-by-step instructions, precise configuration commands, and real-world guidance you need. This distilled, focused, task-centered guide was written for sysadmins, netadmins, consultants, power users everyone whose livelihood depends on making Linux work, and keeping it working.This book's handy Q&A format gives you instant access to specific answers, without ever forcing you to wade through theory or jargon. Peter Harrison addresses virtually every aspect of Linux administration, from software installation to security, user management to Internet services—even advanced topics such as software RAID and centralized LDAP authentication. Harrison's proven command-line examples work quickly and efficiently, no matter what Linux distribution you're using. Here's just some of what you'll learn how to do: Build Linux file/print servers and networks from scratch Troubleshoot Linux and interpret system error messages Control every step of the boot process Create, manage, secure, and track user accounts Install, configure, and test Linux-based wireless networks Protect your network with Linux iptables firewalls Set up Web, e-mail, DNS, DHCP, and FTP servers And much more


Source: Slashdot Org latest news headlines

gaijincory writes "Opensourceversus.com has put together a nice side-by-side comparison of Microsoft Outlook, Evolution and KDE's Kontact groupware programs. The screenshots delve in to the nitty gritty details and should help in making an informed choice, if nothing else. This is a follow up to their comparison of the Outlook Express and Thunderbird e-mail clients."



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Source: LibreNix com Programming Linux and BSD

(Posted 28 May 2005 by Ray)



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Source: Linux Today

"Scientific Linux (SL) might seem a strange choice as a desktop operating system for someone who is retired, disabled, and elderly, and who has relatively little scientific or programming knowledge "


Source: Linux Today

"India s free CD program reminds me of the early days of Linux. If it weren t for cheap Linux CDs a lot of users may never have gotten their hands on Linux "


Source: Linux Today

"Users of the Firefox Web browser have been flocking to Netcraft's Web site to download the security company's new antiphishing toolbar, a company representative said Thursday "


Source: Linux Today

"Use of Linux on personal computers may not have made major inroads against leader Microsoft, but it has become prominent in conversations with information technology executives "


Source: Linux Today

"While Linux may be one of the best-known open-source products, it's just one of myriad open-source software tools encompassing everything from simple calculators to enterprise resource planning tools "


Source: Linux Today

"Here s a paragraph that stopped me dead in my tracks. It s from Attacks on and Countermeasures for USB Hardware Token Devices "



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Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Redet (Regular Expression Development and Execution Tool) is a tool for developing and executing regular expressions using any of more than 20 search programs, editors, and programming languages. For each program in each locale a palette showing the available regular expression constructs is provided. The features of each program are determined by running a test suite, which guarantees that they will be
correct for the particular program version in use and for the user's locale. The locale may be changed without exiting Redet. Selections from the palette may be copied to the regular expression window with a mouse click. Definitions can be added to the palette via an initialization file. The regular expressions executed are recorded in a history list, from which entries may be copied to the regular expression window with a mouse click. This allows complex regular
expressions to be developed in pieces. When a suitable regular expression has been constructed it may be saved to a file. Named character classes may be defined in a file or entered interactively. As long as the underlying program supports Unicode, Redet fully supports UTF-8 Unicode.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Tests and palette entries are now provided for
Java-style possessive quantifiers. Coordination of
scrolling in the two sides of the palette has been
improved. Guile substitution is now supported.
Guile regular expression syntax errors are now
trapped.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Drivel is a LiveJournal client for the GNOME desktop. It's designed to utilize the powerful features of GNOME 2, such as GConf, GnomeVFS, and GTK+, as well comply with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This is the beta release for Drivel 2.0. It
finalizes support for Atom, Blogger, Advogato, and
MovableType journals. Support for LiveJournal
security groups and pinging Technorati has also
been added.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

StatRelief downloads and displays a digest of your SourceForge and freshmeat project statistics. It is ideal if you spend way too much time watching and
repeatedly refreshing those pages when you have something better to do.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
The SourceForge stats have been updated to work
with the site's new statistics pages. (The
"downloads" script which monitors your SourceForge
project's Files page has not yet been validated to
the new system.)


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

mechanoid is a programmatic browser intended as a general solution for
scripting HTML form sequences, such as logging into SourceForge and
doing a Quick Release or sending and receiving Yahoo! mail. It is a fork
of John J. Lee's mechanize.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Error handling of HTMLParser was improved in
PullParser.py.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Fireworkx is a pyrotechnic eye-candy simulation that
explodes in both X and SVGAlib atmospheres.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This version has an assembly language optimized
MMX blur which runs 2-3 times faster. "Glow" mode
was introduced, which makes the explosions more
beautiful even without light-flash effect.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

OpenRelease is a Python module which automates the
packaging, release, and announcement of open
source software. The pack class creates packages,
which are defined by packer classes, manages
versioning, and brings up your notes and changelog
in an editor. The release class uploads the
package to SourceForge, releases it through QRS,
announces it on freshmeat and (if appropriate) on
pypi.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
A bugfix was made in the included mechanoid module
to handle HTMLParseError in the QRS page at
SourceForge.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

quick_release automates the submission of your project's
packages to SourceForge's Quick Release System.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
The documentation regarding HTMLParseError on the
QRS page was updated.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Npgsql is a .NET data provider for PostgreSQL. It implements
version 2.0 of the PostgreSQL protocol, and version 3.0 is
under construction.

License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

Changes:
SSL hangs were fixed. Windows installers were
added. Lot of fixes were made.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

WordPress is a state-of-the-art, semantic, personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, Web standards, and usability. It was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system, and is the official successor to b2/cafelog. While primarily geared towards functioning as a Weblog, it is also a flexible CMS capable of managing many types of Web sites. In addition to the basic Weblog functions, it also has an integrated link manager (e.g. for blogrolls), XFN support, support for "static" pages, Atom and RSS feeds for both content and comments, XML-RPC blogging API support (Blogger, MetaWeblog, and Movable Type APIs), spam blocking features, advanced cruft-free URL generation, a flexible theme system, and an advanced plugin API.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This security release fixes an SQL injection bug. All users are encouraged to upgrade or patch immediately. Simple patch instructions are available on the WordPress Development Blog.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

RouteIt is an iptables configurator and traffic
shaping tool for Linux. RouteIt can help you set
up your firewall by generating iptables rules. It
can setup network address translation (NAT) and
bridge rules in iptables. It can also help you set
traffic limitations and more from a simple Web
interface or easy-to-use configuration files.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

LASANGE aims at creating a mostly-automated LAN session administration and management system. It provides game server management (instant deployment of game servers) and tournament management in a more advanced and automated way than other systems. It also consists of basic tools for LAN sessions such as a generic modular Masterserver.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
A byte-order bug which prevented the Doom 3 plugin
from working has been fixed.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for
the Unix kernel. The Hurd is a collection of
servers that run on the Mach microkernel to
implement file systems, network protocols, file
access control, and other features that are
implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels
(such as Linux).


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

The XCL software suite aims to provide developers
with tools for the programmatic handling of
executable code, combining easy generation and
manipulation with execution speed and memory
efficiency at runtime.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

The XCL software suite aims to provide developers
with tools for the programmatic handling of
executable code, combining easy generation and
manipulation with execution speed and memory
efficiency at runtime.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:


Source: IceWalkers

Advanced Linux Sound Architecture


Source: IceWalkers

Linux Kernel


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Hoard is a scalable memory allocator (malloc replacement) for
multithreaded applications. Hoard can dramatically improve your
application's performance on multiprocessor machines. No changes to your
source are necessary; just link it in. Hoard scales linearly up to at
least 14 processors. The supported platforms include Linux, Solaris, and
Windows NT/2000/XP.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release fixes a crash caused when invoking pthread_create with a
NULL attribute, which is legal according to the POSIX standard. It plays
well with the new Linux threads library (NPTL), which is the default in
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. It takes advantage of compiler support for
thread-local variables when available, further improving performance and
avoiding contention.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Bright Moon 3 is a port of the Window Maker theme of the same name.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release adjusts the background color for better reading and fixes
the theme file, which had one too many subdirectories.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

KBarcode is a barcode and label printing
application for KDE 3. It can be used to print
everything from simple business cards up to
complex labels with several barcodes, such as
article descriptions. KBarcode comes with an
easy-to-use WYSIWYG label designer, a setup
wizard, batch import of labels (directly from the
delivery note), thousands of predefined labels,
database managment tools, and translations in many
languages. Even printing more than 10,000 labels
in one go is no problem for KBarcode.
Additionally, it is a simple xbarcode replacement
for the creation of barcodes. All major types of
barcodes like EAN, UPC, CODE39, and ISBN are
supported.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Image printing issues have been fixed, TBarcode support has been
restored, and CSV importation works again. Barcode printing speed has
been increased through the use of pipes.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

MOC (music on console) is a console audio player with a simple ncurses interface in playmp3list style. It supports MP3 (with ID3 tag, VBR, and Xing headers), Ogg, FLAC, WAVE, and some other less popular audio formats. Playlists can be saved and loaded using .m3u files. It achieves gapless playback by employing an output buffer in a separate thread and file pre-caching. The key mapping can be fully customized. The interface can be detached from the server as it plays in background.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release improves support for Internet streams. Sample rate and
sample format conversions are performed if necessary to play all files
regardless of the capabilities of the sound card. 24bit output can be
used for mp3 files if the sound card supports it. Support for speex
format (without seeking) has been added.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

The Ruby Editor Plugin converts the jEdit
programmer's text editor into an intelligent Ruby
IDE. Focused on programmer productivity, the
plugin lets you manipulate Ruby code at the syntax
level.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release fixes bugs in the parsing of method parameters and single
line methods.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

fish, the friendly interactive shell is a shell that is focused on
interactive use, discoverability, and user friendliness. The design
goal of fish is to give the user a rich set of powerful features in
a way that is easy to discover, remember, and use. fish features a
user-friendly and powerful tab-completion, including descriptions of
every completion, tab-completion of strings with wildcards, and many
completions for specific commands. It also features an extensive and
discoverable help system. A special help command gives access to all the
fish documentation in your preferred Web browser. Other features include
syntax highlighting with extensive error checking, support for the X
clipboard, smart terminal handling based on terminfo, an easy to search,
no duplicates history.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release improves the handling of lines that do not fit the
terminal, and includes improved completion descriptions for builtins,
functions, and various program-specific completions. A new builtin,
"return", has been added for returning from a function. Changes to
the build system in version 1.9.2 mean that binary packages are now
installed to /usr, not /usr/local. You may have to restart some services
when upgrading from versions prior to 1.9.2.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

GNU Transport Layer Security Library is a library which implements a secure layer over a reliable transport layer such as TCP/IP. It implements the TLS 1.1 and SSL 3.0 protocols, accompanied with authentication methods such as X.509, OpenPGP, and SRP.

License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

Changes:
A bug in certificate chain verification was fixed. A new --fix-key parameter was added to certtool to regenerate the optional parameters in a private key. Fixes were made for 64-bit platforms. Gnulib portability files were updated.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

boinc can be used as a console tool to display information
about BOINC projects and working units. It can also be used
to start or stop BOINC.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
The script was modified to work with the development version of boinc, and a German translation was added.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

GNUsound is a sound editor for GNU/Linux. It supports multiple tracks, multiple outputs, and 8, 16, or 24/32-bit samples. It can read and write many audio formats through a number of supported file format libraries (such as AudioFile, libsndfile, and libmp3lame), and it can extract audio from a variety of video files through FFmpeg. It supports OSS, ALSA, or JACK for playback/capture, as well as a large number of high-quality audio effects through the LADSPA plugin architecture.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release fixes a GCC 3.4.2 compilation snag and incorporates a tentative fix for a crash while opening files during playback.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Magellan Metasearch is a modular meta search
engine, enabling users to monitor as many search
engines as they want and use a complex query
language with full boolean syntax and proximity
operators, which is much more elaborate than
languages provided by Google, Altavista, etc. It
can be fed any sources, since its abstraction
layer manages the search results and their meta
tags in a uniform way. In conjunction with the
local process scheduler (such as "cron"), Magellan
enables you to save your requests and replay them
later automatically: new results are sent through
email in real time.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
The Google Groups source driver now enforces a standard date format in metadata. The MSNSearch source driver was updated to strip redirections.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

RPSL (Rapid Prototyping Shared Library) is a set
of bash scripts and utility files that coordinate
the GNU autotools and pkg-config for C/C++ build
automation. The scripts and procedures define a
system for building and linking that supports an
individual or small group. A single command
(rpslSyncBuild) scans for source, writes a
Makefile.am and Configure.ac, and produces a
conventional autotools tree ready for the usual
"configure, make, make install" build steps.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

OW2 is a wiki/BBS management system that offers
multiple areas, user pages, rich markup, internal
backward links, full referer tracking, RSS feeds,
a public chat, and an internal messaging system.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
New plugins were added for editing users and areas, making it easier to get an installation running. Tables were added to the markup, various bugfixes were made, and a better layout was implemented.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

white_dune is a graphical VRML97 editor, simple
NURBS/Superformula 3D modeller and animation tool.
VRML97 (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) is the
ISO standard for displaying 3D data over the Web
via browser plugins ("HTML for realtime 3D"). It has support for animation, real-time interaction, and multimedia (images, movies, and sounds). white_dune can read, create and display VRML97 files and let the user change
the scenegraph/fields. It also has support for
stereoscopic view via "quadbuffer"-capable stereo
visuals, and support for 3D input devices like a
joystick, spaceball, or magnetic tracker.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
A bug that caused a double free when using Array::remove for all array elements was fixed along with a wrong interpretation of some comments. A crash that occurred when using meshes with illegal coordIndiceces of less than -1 was fixed. A -filedialogdir option for the configuration of file dialogs was added and the options were updated in the man page. Compilation support on HP-UX/PA-RISC using cc and aCC was added. A bug where temporary nodes were not removed from the scene in the MeshMorphingNode class was fixed.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Sipp is a performance testing tool for the SIP protocol. It includes
a few basic SipStone user agent scenarios (UAC & UAS) and establishes
and releases multiple calls with the INVITE and BYE methods. It can
also reads XML scenario files describing any performance testing
configuration. It features the dynamic display of statistics
about running tests (call rate, round trip delay, and message
statistics), periodic CSV statistics dumps, TCP and UDP over multiple
sockets or multiplexed with retransmission management, regular
expressions and variables in scenario files, conditional branching, and
dynamically-adjustable call rates.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
Support for the SIP short form, a new [cseq] keyword, a race_rtt command for dumping all response times in a CSV file that can be parsed using "Octave", a max_socket option for sharing opened TCP/TLS sockets, a new "auth_uri" command line parameter, basic support for RFC3262 (PRACK), and -tls_cert and -tls_key options for providing TLS certificate and key files were added. Video RTP echo was added (using -mp port + 2 port) along with a new [branch] keyword. The regexp embedded scenario now has a sub-expression example. Several bugfixes were made.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

CheckGmail is a system tray application that checks a Gmail
account for new mail. It is fast, secure, and uses minimal
bandwidth via the use of Atom feeds.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release improves the new mail notification - unread messages are tracked by timestamps and the authors of new messages rather than the number of unread messages. It also fixes several small bugs and display issues.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Open Sound World (OSW) is a scalable, extensible
programming environment that allows musicians,
sound designers, and researchers to process sound
in response to expressive real-time control. It
combines a familiar visual patching paradigm with
solid programming language features such as a
strong type system and hierarchical name spaces.
OSW also includes an intuitive model for
specifying new components using a graphical
interface and high-level C++ expressions, making
it easy to develop and share new music and signal
processing algorithms.

License: Other/Proprietary License with Source

Changes:
A problem on Linux where some patches would not load or could not be loaded a second time was fixed. SamplePlayer now works properly with Table as well as SampleBuffer. Fixes were made to installation for Linux and Mac OS X.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

phpdyndns is a dynamic DNS client written in PHP
and based on socket extension. It has multiple
hosts support.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
A timeout implementation was added.


Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Qps is a GUI version of "ps" and "top" . It is a perfect visual
process manager that displays processes in a window and
lets you sort and manipulate them easily.

License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

Changes:
A more accurate view of tasks (threads) is now given in Linux. A new scheduling view and five new scheduling fields were added for Linux: TGID, TMS, NLWP, %SLPAVG, and CPUSET. Some trivial bugs were fixed.



Updated: Wed Jun 28 00:25:32 2006


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