If you use Linux with the KDE desktop, you should be eagerly anticipating the 4.0 version. While full functionality may not be there until 4.1 or later, the roadmap and aspirations of the developers ought to be enough to excite the faithful.

I’ll be posting more from my notes of the release event this last weekend at Google, but here’s the keynote address from Aaron Seigo, CEO of KDE e.V.

Most Linux distributions are built to meet a specific purpose, address a specific audience. There are USB-bootable versions, live disks, versions geared toward scientific research or desktop publishing. Ubuntu Linux is one of the few distributions designed around a philosophy.

You may have heard about Ubuntu’s founder and first developer, Mark Shuttleworth.

Shuttleworth gained worldwide fame on 25 April 2002 as a civilian cosmonaut aboard the Russian Soyuz TM-34 mission, paying approximately US$ 20 million. Two days later, the Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station, where he spent eight days participating in experiments related to AIDS and genome research. On 5 May, he returned to Earth. In order to participate on the flight, Shuttleworth had to undergo one year of training and preparation, including seven months spent in Star City, Moscow. (Source-Wikipedia) In the 1990s, Shuttleworth was a developer for Debian Linux. In 2004, he released Ubuntu Linux.

The Ubuntu website has this to say about their guiding philosophy;
“The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Philosophy: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.”

continue reading "The Official ubuntu Book"

Usually I prefer to review books one at a time. Since I like to not only read the book I’m reviewing but apply some of the suggestions it makes to evaluate it from an average user’s point of view as well, trying to cover more than one book per review is difficult.

In the case of these two books, though, my usual practices have to be ignored. These two books not only need to be reviewed together, they need to be purchased and read together. Allow me to expand on my reasoning.

Fedora Core is, in my experience, the first Linux distribution to include setting up SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) as part of its installation routine. Even though SELinux is supported by Debian and Gentoo, Fedora is the only OS I’ve encountered that presents the opportunity to setup SELinux during installation. Having both these books at hand while setting up Fedora Core 5 will leave you with no unanswered questions.

Red Hat Fedora 5 Unleashed is a massive book. To look at it, someone unfamiliar with Linux might think that Fedora is a very complicated system. Actually Fedora is one of the easier distributions to install. The reason the book is so large is that it covers every aspect of the Fedora Core 5 operating system in exquisite detail.

continue reading "Fedora 5 Unleashed & SELinux by Example"

Packaging isn’t usually an element of my book reviews. We all know what a book looks like, how can someone package a book to make it more interesting?

Sams Publishing understands that packaging is all about making your product stand out, catching the shopper’s eye. It’s what helps a potential customer choose your product over another. With the Linux Starter Kit, it’s what makes this offering unique.

SUSE has always been one of the better documented distributions of Linux. I’ve been a SUSE user since version 7. I always purchased the boxed version as it came with an extensive manual as well as the installation disks. By the time version 8.2 became available, I no longer needed the manual but I still purchased the box just to support the developers of this robust operating system. SUSE has long been one of my favorite distributions.

SUSE Linux isn’t a distribution that’s usually mentioned when the discussion turns to which distribution a new Linux user should consider. I’m not sure why. The SUSE desktop is no less intuitive than the distributions that are thought to be the easiest for someone migrating from Microsoft’s products to Linux, like Mandriva, Linspire or Xandros Desktop. Installation and setup can be a bit daunting, as there’s more to configure than the average Windows user encounters. But if they can get some assistance during that process, the result is a Linux system that is rock solid, mature and feature rich.

continue reading "Linux Starter Kit"

The open-source Firefox Web browser is critically flawed in the way it handles JavaScript, two hackers said Saturday afternoon.

As reported in C|Net Newstoday:

An attacker could commandeer a computer running the browser simply by crafting a Web page that contains some malicious JavaScript code, Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi said in a presentation at the ToorCon hacker conference here. The flaw affects Firefox on Windows, Apple Computer’s Mac OS X and Linux, they said.

“Internet Explorer, everybody knows, is not very secure. But Firefox is also fairly insecure,” said Spiegelmock, who in everyday life works at blog company SixApart. He detailed the flaw, showing a slide that displayed key parts of the attack code needed to exploit it.

The flaw is specific to Firefox’s implementation of JavaScript, a 10-year-old scripting language widely used on the Web. In particular, various programming tricks can cause a stack overflow error, Spiegelmock said. The implementation is a “complete mess,” he said. “It is impossible to patch.”

The JavaScript issue appears to be a real vulnerability, Window Snyder, Mozilla’s security chief, said after watching a video of the presentation Saturday night.

continue reading "Firefox Web browser is critically flawed"

One of the greatest strengths of the Linux operating system is the power of the command line. One of the greatest weaknesses of the Linux operating system is that it’s not easy to remember all the commands that can harness that power. Many reference books include a smattering of commands that will accomplish a limited number of tasks. Scott Granneman has compiled a collection of Linux commands that will allow you to do almost anything you need to do from a terminal. To make it even more indispensable, it is small enough to fit into your laptop case or backpack so you can have it available whenever you need it.

The Linux Phrasebook doesn’t include a lot of flashy graphics or irrelevant comments. Each topic is laid out in a way to make it easy to understand and implement a specific command. Granneman gives you a scenario in which a particular action would be applicable, shows you the command as it would be typed into a terminal, and concludes with a brief description of what the results will be. With an average of one command per page, nearly 370 commands are covered in this one book.

A complete contents listing and index make finding the command you need a breeze. Despite the paperback book size of the Linux Phrasebook, each page is easy to read, with margin space for your own notes. The layout is perfect for the purpose of this book.

If you’ve ever needed to quickly find a way to view the status of your network interfaces, list your Samba shares, execute shell commands, or print find results into a file from a terminal, keep a copy of the Linux Phrasebook handy. It will put you in command of your system.

Linux Phrasebook
Author: Scott Granneman
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Sams (June 12, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0672328380
SRP: $14.99 USA / $18.00 CAN / £10.99 Net UK