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Then I guess I should mention Netcraft :)
But there's the "Open Phishing Databse" for you. They don't seem to have any evil firm behind them: http://opdb.berlios.de/.

what i was talking about is a feature in the MS virtual desktop manager power toy, i can click a button and it goes full screen showing screenshots of all four desktops and the apps open on them. i haven't found a way to do this in kde or any other WM in linux yet, but it is a nice feature... i may have to send in a feature request to the kde devels.

Something like kompose?

If that's what you are looking for, it can be found here.

what i was talking about is a feature in the MS virtual desktop manager power toy, i can click a button and it goes full screen showing screenshots of all four desktops and the apps open on them. i haven't found a way to do this in kde or any other WM in linux yet, but it is a nice feature... i may have to send in a feature request to the kde devels.

Something like kompose?

If that's what you are looking for, it can be found here.

Well, I haven't had the chance to read the exact Chinese wording but if I were a vendor looking to sell naked PCs, I'd simply use a superior OS.

That's right, simply burn 17MB CDLinux ISO (with Chinese language support) to a CD and "install" the disc into the CD-ROM drive. When the computer boots up, it will have a properly licensed operating system running. Should the consumer choose to install some other operating system *cough* *cough* they won't even need to format the hard drive or write over the partition tables!

Seriously, I think this is just a laughable edict that the Chinese Government has done to bolster trade with United States software firms. The factories in China are just going to distribute Linux or some other free operating system and even have instructions on how to install windows over it. The government knows this also and that's why it's happy to comply with something the US companies are asking it to do ... because it doesn't change anything. It just makes manufacturing boxes a bit more cumbersome.

Who knows, if the manufacturers use a nice enough version of Linux, they might cause quite a few people to convert?

Well, I haven't had the chance to read the exact Chinese wording but if I were a vendor looking to sell naked PCs, I'd simply use a superior OS.

That's right, simply burn 17MB CDLinux ISO (with Chinese language support) to a CD and "install" the disc into the CD-ROM drive. When the computer boots up, it will have a properly licensed operating system running. Should the consumer choose to install some other operating system *cough* *cough* they won't even need to format the hard drive or write over the partition tables!

Seriously, I think this is just a laughable edict that the Chinese Government has done to bolster trade with United States software firms. The factories in China are just going to distribute Linux or some other free operating system and even have instructions on how to install windows over it. The government knows this also and that's why it's happy to comply with something the US companies are asking it to do ... because it doesn't change anything. It just makes manufacturing boxes a bit more cumbersome.

Who knows, if the manufacturers use a nice enough version of Linux, they might cause quite a few people to convert?

or better yet, get Quicksilver http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/, and do more than just search/find. In fact, add Desktop Manager http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/ and use virtual desktops to keep your clutter clean. But what do these have to do with the thread? I find they both simplify and enhance the OS. Quicksilver is so much faster at finding files, applications, contact, music than any of the other built in methods within OS X no matter which cat you use (Panther or Tiger). Additionally, Quicksilver can start up your applications much faster than going into the Applications folder in finder (yes, I am aware that there is a dock at the bottom of my screen but I try to minimize the number of icons in there to conserve screen space.) Speaking of Screen Space, Desktop Manager is a program for Mac that gives you virtual desktops similiar to the manner of Linux. Keystrokes or a page allows you to switch desktops, and you can move applications from one to the other, and if you like the eyecandy there are some nice effects for switching as well, I turn them off most of the time, cause I just like to change desktops not have a Broadway show everytime I want to change from doing Graphic Design to Web Browsing.

I feel that making a clean well preconfigured install is the first step in configuration management. It is also crucial to your backup plan, as it relieves you from making complete system backups. This is not to say that you shouldn't be tracking your installed files via IDS, but the actual files should be already in your repository. I use debian with apt-repositories, but the general idea should be universal. This method lets me make more selective (and smaller) backups.

I started with FAI - http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/
which is really good. FAI shares its configuration style with cfengine. You can even use fai and cfengine in tandem with some sort of install/update strategy. I would highly recommend taking a good look at both of these systems.

Both fai and cfengine are written in perl. I can't stand perl, and since I have desperate need of similar tools, I decided to roll my own in python. The project is here -> http://paella.berlios.de/ . This code is still immature and isn't fit to be used for any activites deemed to be critical.

Another method I am using is simple tracking of changes in the /etc directory. I made a simple program for this too. http://developer.berlios.de/projects/etcsvn
This program really shines a little more if you have multiple similar hosts, because you can manage some config files with a working copy, patch the corresponding files in the relevant host config directories, commit the changes, and then restore/update the config on those hosts. Its really nothing more than a simple tool to keep your /etc from being a working copy, and keeping track of ownership and permissions of those files.

I am currently looking at bcfg2 http://www.mcs.anl.gov/cobalt/bcfg2/, as a replacement for cfengine. I just found out about it recently, but it's also written in python and has limited client-side dependencies.

Probably the most important thing is to be prepared to spend a great deal of time in planning, implementing and testing your system. Every tool I have seen so far makes assumptions, or has requirements, that don't match yours. Mine do too, and there is really no way to get around this.

As a general rule, you will want to look for a system that stores the configuration in a manner that you can deal with it the easiest, regardless of the configuration that it exports. The mechanics of the configuration processing should be implemented by a language that you are comfortable enough with to make the changes necessary for future strategies.

I feel that making a clean well preconfigured install is the first step in configuration management. It is also crucial to your backup plan, as it relieves you from making complete system backups. This is not to say that you shouldn't be tracking your installed files via IDS, but the actual files should be already in your repository. I use debian with apt-repositories, but the general idea should be universal. This method lets me make more selective (and smaller) backups.

I started with FAI - http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/
which is really good. FAI shares its configuration style with cfengine. You can even use fai and cfengine in tandem with some sort of install/update strategy. I would highly recommend taking a good look at both of these systems.

Both fai and cfengine are written in perl. I can't stand perl, and since I have desperate need of similar tools, I decided to roll my own in python. The project is here -> http://paella.berlios.de/ . This code is still immature and isn't fit to be used for any activites deemed to be critical.

Another method I am using is simple tracking of changes in the /etc directory. I made a simple program for this too. http://developer.berlios.de/projects/etcsvn
This program really shines a little more if you have multiple similar hosts, because you can manage some config files with a working copy, patch the corresponding files in the relevant host config directories, commit the changes, and then restore/update the config on those hosts. Its really nothing more than a simple tool to keep your /etc from being a working copy, and keeping track of ownership and permissions of those files.

I am currently looking at bcfg2 http://www.mcs.anl.gov/cobalt/bcfg2/, as a replacement for cfengine. I just found out about it recently, but it's also written in python and has limited client-side dependencies.

Probably the most important thing is to be prepared to spend a great deal of time in planning, implementing and testing your system. Every tool I have seen so far makes assumptions, or has requirements, that don't match yours. Mine do too, and there is really no way to get around this.

As a general rule, you will want to look for a system that stores the configuration in a manner that you can deal with it the easiest, regardless of the configuration that it exports. The mechanics of the configuration processing should be implemented by a language that you are comfortable enough with to make the changes necessary for future strategies.

The problem is that Schilling wants linux to behave exactly like Solaris' incomprehensable s,b,l format even though Linux has to support more devices and refuses to even read patches that make things easier for Linux users. It's at the point that if cdrecord accidentally supports something that doesn't look like the solaris way Schilling will add code to disable it.

Combine that with the fact that the DVD tools from Schilling are no longer open source and requires a License key The project has been forked.

If your having trouble with cdrecord I'd suggest using the alternate version instead.

eally, I don't know how Mac and Windows people work efficiently with many applications and no virtual desktops...

windows, mac.

For sure Miguel is a Mono evangelist, and yes i've also read articles like:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/11/mono_and_d otgnu_whats/

And yes there seem to be few companies using Mono at the moment, but for me, as a developer who gets paid to write proprietary software, but who would rather get paid to develop open source software (run on open source operating systems) it's gives me the option of using a completely open source environment, and a mechanism to make the transition.

As an example, I have already been able to successfully use Mono to run a project I built to handle Subversion administration using NAnt.

http://svn.berlios.de/viewcvs/subnant/trunk/README .txt?view=markup

At work we're a Windows shop (so .net CLR) so Subnant runs on that, at home, and for anyone else who wants to run it, the Mono version (on Windows or Linux) runs all the tests run and performs nearly on par with the .net CLR (Mono performance has increased significantly in recent iterations)

I'm currently in the planning phase for a more ambitious open source healthcare-related project, and plan to develop that so it can use either a completely free open source software stack (Linux->Mono->MonoRail->ActiveRecord->Firebird) or a more traditional proprietary stack (Windows->.NET CLR->MonoRail->ActiveRecord->SQL Server).

Sure this means i've got more work setting up my build process and more testing on multiple operating sytems and database environments, but at least it gives me (and hopefully anyone who wants to use the software) choice, and choice is good!

Well lemme throw my specs in (this is my office PC,my home machine is 3 orders of magnitude faster).

I'm running Mandriva on a Dell T-500. 128 Mb RAM, Katmai P-3 processor (500 MHz, 512 kb cache) & kernel's vm.swappiness is at 60. KDE 3.4 stable with most of the bells & whistles. May be able to upgrade the RAM soon. Right now, if I keep ooffice & firefox preloaded in memory (http://mozillaqs.sourceforge.net/#DOWNLOADS) & (http://segfaultskde.berlios.de/index.php?content= oooqs)

I see no noticeable loss in application perf, apart from the hopeless swapping (hopefully more RAM will take care of that).

Dunno much about my HDD, but I'd imagine it's rpm would be verylow (4200?).

The other problem is that xorg clocks up the cpu badly (almost at 100% all the time). I probably should switch to a low footprint distro like DSL or slackware or whatever, but dammit I want to make my box look cool and wipe the smug grins off of the faces of the windoze users in my office! Should I roll back to XFree86? Maybe I'll google sometime & see if there is any way to calm down the running X.

Just grab Desktop Manager and you've got virtual desktops as sleek as they get. Helps my productivity a lot while still looking so friggin' cool (with cube switch) that people blink and look again when they see it.

The days you speak of required a force restart of the computer if a program froze. I much prefer having months of uptime under OS X.
It's not a law of the universe, but in my opinion, the OS X UI is the best thing available right now, and a thousand times more efficient than OS 9.

It's only confusing if you keep a closed mind, trying to do things the way they're done on Windows.

Shoving things into the right-click menu that don't belong is one of the worst things that developers have picked up from Windows. I hope we never see that kind of user abuse on OS X. (Why would I want options in a menu available that aren't appropriate for what is being clicked on?)

Switch the file dialog to list view if you don't like the column view (I find the column view an absolute necessity now)

If your company has 10.3 or higher on that Mac, just hit F10 to see all open windows for the application you're currently in, and hit F9 if you want to see and choose from all open windows. Expose is no multiple desktop replacement (you mentioned you didn't want to install software on it, but if you do decide to at some point, http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/ is free)

Press the friggin' eject button on your keyboard. Who drags disks to the trash anymore? You seem to have skipped the 'catch-up' lesson most OS 9 users got when they went to OS X.

http://www.berlios.de/ - free for open source projects
http://wush.net/ - for commercial projects

After going through every music player that I could find, both closed and open source, I have definitely landed square on wxMusik http://musik.berlios.de/. It Plays mp3, ogg, APE ,MPC ,FLAC, mp2, wav, aiff and wma (win only) files...sorry no AAC as of yet...but it's open source and cross platform, so you can make it happen.

So use virtual desktops: http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/

I think it's a much better interface than WinXP's or Linux's app switchers, although I admit the differences are minimal.

Um, the WinXP alt-tab works exactly as you describe, and with the Microsoft powertoys, you can actually make it display a preview of the window you are switching to.

The lack of virtual desktops on Mac OS is a bit of a drag, though.

http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/

last exploit I remember of winamp Was when that disaster known as Winamp TV came out.

Porn site operators found out rather quickly you could incorporate pop-up ads when you connect to their streams.

http://www.berlios.de/

Rejoice, freedom is on the way.

Elite. So much so, that I'm now the Linux maintainer for the tribute game, Oolite (originally for Mac OS X). Oolite is an open source Elite clone written in Objective C and Cocoa for the Mac, GNUstep for Linux/BSD. Oolite is extensible with scripts and new ships, too.

http://oolite-linux.berlios.de/ - for the Linux binary installer (autopackage or tarball, your choice - has *no* dependencies for most distros) and source code.
http://oolite.aegidian.org/ - for the Mac OS X version.
A windows port is also under way (currently in alpha, you can get it from ftp.alioth.net/oolite)

Meanwhile, djvu and pnm tools have been compiled for the Librie Linux ARM kernel, add them to some bash scripting and using Marko's lbhook-hacked firmware is is possible to run a sort of djvu reader from the Memory Stick.

If people takes seriously the issue of acking into the Reader when it is available, they should be no problem to get native linux tools running there. The quest will be to open a way to the bash shell.

There a a few Germans who have started to write a native driver.

Visit http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/ to learn more about it.

Not sure what chipset your wireless card uses, but if it's Broadcom, there are 2 solutions now. 1) http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ lets you use Windows drivers on Linux. 2) http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/ the native Broadcom driver is stabilizing now. It's experimental at this state, but people are using it on both x86 and ppc. I think you have to have a 2.6.15 or later kernel to use that though. I'm still using ndiswrapper for mine, it works okay until the native drivers are stabilized more.

MLDonkey is an all in one client for Bittorrent, Donkey, Overnet, Gnutella2, Gnutella, Napster, Soulseek, Fasttrack, etc., etc. What's more it can share chunks between protocls. If you'd just use mldonkey, there would be only one big p2p net. It has offical HTML, GTK2 and Java client UIs and there are a couple good 3rd party UI's as well. Personally I tend to use the HTML interface. It is faster for tunnelling over ssh. $ sudo apt-get install mldonkey-server

MLDonkey is an all in one client for Bittorrent, Donkey, Overnet, Gnutella2, Gnutella, Napster, Soulseek, Fasttrack, etc., etc. What's more it can share chunks between protocls. If you'd just use mldonkey, there would be only one big p2p net. It has offical HTML, GTK2 and Java client UIs and there are a couple good 3rd party UI's as well. Personally I tend to use the HTML interface. It is faster for tunnelling over ssh. $ sudo apt-get install mldonkey-server

No offense, but you need to compare OS/X with more recent systems.

> I mean some of the features like Expose and Dashboard are really convenient once you
> get to use them

Only compared to using nothing to organize your windows. I use desktop manager for keeping my various apps organized by default. I hardly ever used Exposé as result.

> system wide services

Very few applications provide services (in the application's menu). To make applications interact, windows' COM is actually superior.

> How could one argue that having features from one program (or independent of any program)
> that can be used by all other programs. It saves the hassle and overhead from multiple
> programs replicating the same functionality.

This is exactly what Microsoft COM does, and like I said it's more powerful than Apple services. You can integrate application components into your own, like for example an Excel spreadsheet into your own accounting software, whatever.

> apps that are directories

Superior to the windows' way of installing anywhere and modifying the registry, but not as good as something like stow IMHO. Anyway, this is a 1990 NeXTStep feature.

> It will be very difficult to convince me to downgrade to a system where you can't use
> your spellchecker in all applications

System spellchecking is great, but it's not enabled for all applications under OS/X, only certain Cocoa apps. Firefox doesn't have the system spellchecking at all for example. Word comes with its own spellchecker (incompatible with the system's). None of the Adobe apps, all built with Carbon, have system spellchecking.

> I can copy a program onto a flash drive or an ipod and it works just fine. I can back up
> programs without worrying about installers.

For some apps yes, for others, no. Usually the large applications require an installer.

> The UI is great and more consistent,

Between Cocoa (white and brushmetal), Carbon and X apps, I tend to disagree.

> but more importantly for me is the multitasking. It actually works under high loads.
> I have a dozen applications running right now, and that is normal.

Windows since 2k has no problem with this. Under Linux I typically run 2-3 users at once, 10-20 apps each with no problem, and Linux is faster and much better than OS/X at memory management.

> My uptime on my laptop right now is 45 days,
> even though I carry it back an forth to work every day and
> used it to game at a LAN party last weekend.

This is true that I love this aspect about my iBook.

> I can run the vast majority of software designed for Linux, including X apps,
> as well as most mainstream software, since most things have a mac port.

Have you tried OpenOffice 2.0 on Mac yet? It's pretty terrible, whereas it works great on Linux and Windows. The truth is the Mac port of F/OSS is usually behind and of lesser quality than what is found under linux. Moreover Apple's X11 server is slow and poorly integrated.

> I guess what I'm not seeing is how you consider another OS to be superior.

For me, I don't much like Windows, but it is unmatched for games. Games suck on OS/X, they are usually older and more expensive, except for a few. For file and compute servers, I like Linux, especially on 64-bit machines. OS/X is not 64-bit despite what Apple pretends, and Linux is much more efficient on the same hardware (see Berkeley link above).

I like my little iBook - OS/X, but I'd love it more if I could have a decent CPU in it and if OS/X were more efficient.

> Maybe if you need some specific, resource intensive application that only runs on
> Windows, you're stuck.

It's all a matter of compromises. Mac + OS/X is a good platform but not perfect. It

If the usb video class takes off like usb mass storage (Logitec is using it for one). Have a look at work of Laurent Pinchart http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/.

Of course, missing specs just means someone has to reverse-engineer: http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/

Still some other hardware in there with no specs, tho. ATI used to be very good in releasing docs, but there's nothing for the latest stuff. At least they have their own proprietary driver, but you're pretty much stuck with it forever...

Too Bad Feather Linux is dieing. Second post on this forum thread.

Granted I have not looked around much for possibilities of people picking this up to keep it going, but from the looks up it, it is not going to be updated again on an official level. I guess you can still remaster the cd.

It's not a bad distro; I tend to use DSL myself.

I think, to be honest, that all that was really shown is that popular modern Linux desktop distributions are targetted at modern hardware, and as a result don't run as well on older hardware. They ran Red Hat and Mandrake and Novell etc. 'out of the box' with no customisation to make it fit with the hardware - unsurprisingly the default install of such distros a targetted at modern systems and have hefty system requirements.

Pick up a distribution that actually claims to target older hardware, or just generally fit in smaller places, like say Damn Small Linux, Feather Linux or Zenwalk and I suspect you'll find much better performance and much lower system requirements all 'out of the box'. The counter-claim seems to be that Windows CE, with the right customisations, will run on older hardware too. Does anyone know if their is a release of CE set up for desktop use on older hardwre?

Jedidiah.

The powerlinux page for the Mac mini points to another page with details about the wireless driver. I agree with you that the ppc debian repositories are pretty extensive at this point.

Actually, thanks to some clever reverse engineering, it is up to Yellow Dog now. The folks at http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/ have released an open source driver for Airport Extreme. In fact, I'm using it now to submit this post on Gentoo running on a 12" Powerbook. Instructions can be found here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-409194.html

Now if Macromedia would just release Flash for Linux PPC . . .

*sigh* Don't post if you don't know what TFA is about. http://freenx.berlios.de/info.php

You don't really say what type of problems you want to work on and that can make a big difference in what environment you choose. Kernel hacking leads in one direction, and DB-driven websites goes in a completey different direction.

Speaking as a GeezerGeek(tm), here are some of the technologies I have found that are something more than The Next Great Thing ver 31.4.

1. Python. It took me a while to get past the indentation-as-block-structure thing (I still think it was a mistake), but this is a language that tremendous expressive power. If I were still teaching, this is the language I would start my students with, knowing that they could go anywhere they want with it.

2. If you are doing any sort of web work, you will probably have to do a little (a lot?) PHP. Fortunately, v. 5 has fixed some of the nastier aspects of the language, although there appears to be no way to undo some truly horrible naming convention mistakes from its early days.

3. AJAX. It's worth a look if you want to stay within the browser's window. And that means you should get good Javascript/CSS/XML/HTML books.

4. Firefox-as-UI-platform. This is related to the above. I am just beginning to get into this and it looks very promising. Other people know far more than I do. The GreaseMonkey extension is great fun to play with.

5. If you are picking up a DBMS, the obvious choices are MySQL and Postgres. If I were just starting, I think I would go with Postgres, if only for OSS purity reasons. OTOH, I have had no problems with MySQL for the relatively low-level situations I have used it and it is generally more available as part of commercial hosting packages.

"Back in the day" I taught programming, so here are a few recommendations for your first few projects.

A. First, pick something fun and relatively simple. I have found that a great way to get into a new language/platform environment is to implement a simple game (eg. hangman, snake, mastermind). The rules are very straightforward, yet they will force you to at least dip your mental toe into logic flow, class structure, I/O and UI, file storage (for high scores), etc. Most of them can be implemented in a few hours and you get that immediate feedback of success. If you are feeling your oats, you might try things like using Python's generators as nanothreads for animation sprites. See the Lightweight Games Toolkit at http://lgt.berlios.de/ for some ideas. (Obviously, this should *not* be for your first project! :-)

B. Pick an area of application that you are already a domain expert in. This way you can focus on the "how", instead of the "what" or the "why".

C. Find a good OSS project and implement a few new features. For example, if you are interested in photography, you might grab Gallery 2 from gallery.menalto.com and try adding a feature to an existing layout module, or try creating a new layout, using an existing one as a template.

D. Find an interesting-but-broken OSS project and dive into the code. Maybe you can breathe new life into a moribund project.

Since Linux FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) became part of the 2.6.14 mainline Linux kernel, any user (not just root) can mount remote directories set up under KDE.

They could mostly do that already, with programs along the lines of smb4k. Wouldn't work for an arbitrary kio (fish), but the school network is most likely SMB.

Although, it's a real shame it took so long for FUSE to come out, and that separate features are conflated. Userspace applications providing the filesystem and non-root users creating mounts (in their own ~ and for their own use ONLY) are separate problems, which should've been separately solved years ago. UNIX needed some of these from the start.

Oh Great, I just found an 'all in one' installer for Lyx

http://developer.berlios.de/projects/lyxwininstall

None of your arguments above are valid.

Remote Desktop Access - NX Server http://www.nomachine.com/ http://freenx.berlios.de/
When I switch VT's on my Gentoo box every VT has a logon prompt. KDE3.4 and some earlier versions have sessions and easy user switching. As to the bottom part there are the various hotplug daemons that autoload kernel modules and if you are actually talking about upgrading the version of a module then usualy you are compiling a new kernel as well which will require a reboot anyways.

is mutt or, better yet, mutt-ng if you're using IMAP.
No, really.

There are a ton of comments in Haiku. Just take a look at their SVN.

This would be great for TuxKart http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net/ and SuperTux http://supertux.berlios.de/! Or would these be more appropriate on a hacked Revolution http://www.nintendo.com/revolution?

Two forks are mentioned on wikipedia:
OpenVAS
Porz-Wahn

defaults write com.apple.finder AutoplayAudioCD -bool false

The official WorldWind code hasn't yet been ported to Linux, but the WW2D project (an Open Source clone) is arguably better anyway. Check out

http://ww2d.berlios.de/

Well the wireless card on my ibook is not supported at all. I use wireless at home and around my work, so having wireless support is important to me. Some people are trying to reverse engineer the broadcom driver for the ibook. Broadcom is not helping the Linux community much and apple is not switching to a different wireless chipset.

I once wrote a script for this. You'll need xsltproc, latex-ucs and imagemagick. It worked quite well a year ago, but it is hard to keep up with wikipedia, because it's changing all the time.

http://wiki2pdf.berlios.de/

Usage: ./wikipdf Leonhard_Euler

FeatherLinux http://featherlinux.berlios.de/
Slax http://slax.linux-live.org/
FlashPuppy http://www.goosee.com/puppy/flash-puppy.htm>

Good Luck

Kompose does the same thing but groups windows by virtual desktops (if you have different wallpapers for the desktops it can also display those) and overlays the window title and icon. It can also use Composite but unless you need the latest and greatest IMHO it's better not to use the Composite extension at all; it's slow (unless you use the NVidia drivers afaik), buggy and crash prone.