Why eBay Should Open-Source Skype
Glyn Moody weighs in on the benefits of opening Skype.
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Examining the Compilation Process. Part 1.
Mike Diehl discusses preprocessing, compilation, assembly, and linking.
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Load Me Up, Load Me Down
The second-generation HP Media Vault.
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Linux Journal Live!
Join Editor Shawn Powers Thursday evenings at 7:30pm Central Time-- live! Ask questions, listen in.
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HOW-TOs
uDig GIS: A First Look
October 10th, 2008 by James Gray in
Part of an ongoing series of on open-source geographic information system (GIS) programs, this article offers an introduction to uDig GIS. uDig is for GIS users of all levels, from beginners to advanced.
Bash Extended Globbing
October 8th, 2008 by Mitch Frazier in
Wildcards in bash are referred to as pathname expansion. Pathname expansion is also sometimes referred to as globbing. Pathname expansion "expands" the "*", "?", and "[...]" syntaxes when you type them as part of a command, for example:
$ ls *.jpg # List all JPEG files $ ls ?.jpg # List J
Bash Parameter Expansion
October 1st, 2008 by Mitch Frazier in
If you use bash you already know what Parameter Expansion is, although you may have used it without knowing its name. Anytime you use a dollar sign followed by a variable name you're doing what bash calls Parameter expansion, eg echo $a or a=$b. But parameter expansion has numerous other forms which allow you to expand a parameter and modify the value or substitute other values in the expansion process.
Change Volume From a Bash Script
September 24th, 2008 by Mitch Frazier in
If you use ALSA for sound on your system the functions contained in the script presented here can be used to get and set the volume on your system. You might use this if you had a monitoring script running and wanted to raise the volume when you signal an alarm and then lower it again to the previous volume.
Product Review
Research Report: "Open Source in the Enterprise", a Review
October 2nd, 2008 by James Gray in
This is a review of a relatively new resource, called Open Source in the Enterprise (OSIE) by Bernard Golden. The report's raison d'être is to help companies to decide if open source applications are right for their enterprise, and if so, how to implement it intelligently.
More From LinuxJournal.com
The Green Penguin: Going Green With Google
October 7th, 2008 by James Gray in
"The Green Penguin" is a new blog devoted to ‘green’ IT related to Linux (though at times loosely). This week´s topic is about Google and General Electric´s recently announced plan to promote a ‘smart’ electric power grid and thus encourage greater use of renewable energy.
Adios Windows 9x
September 25th, 2008 by LJ Staff in
The upcoming release of Cygwin version 1.7 will be dropping support for Windows 9x (Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me). If you're lucky enough never to have to use Windows, Cygwin probably seems like a waste of effort. But, if you're not so lucky, Cygwin is what keeps you sane.
Join us for Linux Journal Live! Thursday Evening
September 24th, 2008 by LJ Staff
Join Editor Shawn Powers and columnist Kyle "Hack and /" Rankin this Thursday evening -- live! Ask questions, listen in... whatever you do just make sure to come join in the fun.
Slax: Your Pocket Operating System
September 18th, 2008 by Carlie Fairchild in
Slax is a fast, small, portable Linux distribution taking a modular approach that gives you the ability to easily add on your favorite software. Just download a module with the software, copy it to Slax -- no installing, no configuring.
See it in action:
Linux Product Insider - ”Free the Penguins” Virtualization in Schools Initiative
September 17th, 2008 by James Gray in
The "Linux Product Insider" features: ”Free the Penguins” Virtualization in Schools Initiative; ZaReason's Breeze 3110 PC; Gimpel's FlexeLint for C/C++; Glacier Computer's Everest Rugged Industrial Computer; Alternative Technology's Oracle Unbreakable Linux Support.
Breaking News
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Blogs and Opinion
Venezuela Gets It
October 9th, 2008 by Phil Hughes
No matter what else you may think of Hugo Chávez (probably bad if you get your information from the U.S.
Clickjacking! Noooooooooo!
October 8th, 2008 by marcel
As if you didn't have enough to worry about, with the stock market crashing and all your savings going south . . . U.S. CERT issued a warning about a new browser exploit called "clickjacking". Worst of all, it even affects Linux browsers. Yikes! Jeremiah Grossman, founder and CTO of WhiteHat Security, U.S. CERT said, "Clickjacking gives an attacker the ability to trick a user into clicking on something only barely or momentarily noticeable. Therefore, if a user clicks on a Web page, they may actually be clicking on content from another page."
Compiz Killed My Video Card
October 7th, 2008 by Mitch Frazier
Having recently installed a new version of Linux I thought I'd see how progress on Compiz, the compositing window manager, was going. I tried it first on a system with an ATI video card and was met with a wonderful blank screen. Since I really didn't want to spend a bunch of time trying to figure out what was going on I just put things back to normal and got X working again.
Stallman vs. Clouds
October 6th, 2008 by Doc Searls
I respect Richard Stallman for the same reason I respect gravity. The man is a force of nature. He is like the iron core of the Earth: fixed, central, essential. So, when I read a story like "Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman", which ran in the Guardian last week, I take notice. And I'm not alone. A search on Google for stallman "cloud computing" brings up 142,000 results.
Rebuilding a Laptop Battery
October 5th, 2008 by Phil Hughes
When your laptop battery is about to give up the ghost, you are
probably thinking of the typical three alternatives. The most
obvious, of course, is "wow, what a great justification for buying
a new laptop". With laptop prices falling and no such luck with
battery prices, this almost makes sense. But, most of us will
probably just bite the bullet and buy a new battery.
Linux turns 17
October 5th, 2008 by Doc Searls
Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT, was the subject of Linus Benedict Torvalds post to comp.os.minix on October 5, 1991 -- seventeen years ago today.
A Disturbing Trend
October 4th, 2008 by David Lane
"Lawyers in the Windows Vista Capable lawsuit against Microsoft want a federal judge to force the company to use Windows Update to notify potential class members of the suit, according to court documents." This is the opening paragraph in an article in ComputerWorld. A number of people, including myself think this is a bad idea.
Stay of execution for Internet radio
September 30th, 2008 by Doc Searls
Says here that Internet radio is about to get a reprieve. We've been covering the fight between the RIAA and webcasters for many years, going back to the DMCA, which left working out webcasting royalties pretty much unfinished.
Openness is the Solution to the (Double) Subprime Crisis
September 30th, 2008 by Glyn Moody
As I listen to all this talk of lack of trust in the banking system, of inflated values ungrounded in any reality, of “opacity”, and of “contaminated” financial instruments, I realise I have heard all this before. In the world of software, as in the world of finance, there is contamination by overvalued, ungrounded offerings that have led to systemic mistrust, sapped the ability of the computer industry to create real value, and led it to squander vast amounts of time and money on the pursuit of the illusory, insubstantial wealth that is known as “intellectual property”.
Linux and FOSS in a Slowing Economy
September 26th, 2008 by Katherine Druckman
In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, apparently the US economy isn't doing too well these days. There is a lot of news lately about banks failing, government bail-outs, and natural disasters that will cost us all a lot of money (thanks, Ike).
Toshiba NB100 for Linux
September 23rd, 2008 by Phil Hughes
It seems that lots of people are talking about Toshiba's NB100 mini-laptop but they are just talking about it appearing in the UK market in October. What The Register has to say is as good as any.
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Linux Journal Live - Oct 9, 2008
October 9th, 2008 by Shawn Powers
The October 9, 2008 edition of Linux Journal Live! Associate Editor, Shawn Powers, and Kyle Rankin, "Hack and /" columnist and author of Knoppix Hacks, Linux Multimedia Hacks, Knoppix Pocket Reference and others, discuss Linux distributions.
Linux Journal Live - Oct 2, 2008
October 3rd, 2008 by Shawn Powers
The October 2, 2008 edition of Linux Journal Live! Associate Editor, Shawn Powers, and Steven Evatt, Online Development manager for The Houston Chronicle discuss surviving disaster with Linux.
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From the Magazine
November 2008, #175
There aren't many numbers that put the US national debt to shame, but here's one: 1,100,000,000,000,000. What's that? That's how many floating-point operations per second the Roadrunner supercomputer at Las Alamos can perform. That's about 100 FLOPS per dollar of US debt (unfortunately, the debt is winning the second derivative race). Read the article about Roadrunner in this month's High Performance Computing issue of LJ.
Along with that, find out how to program the Cell processor and how to use CUDA with your NVIDIA GPU. Also in this issue: Mr HandS (aka Kyle Rankin) gives us a few tips on using Compiz, Chef Marcel shows you how to get blogging off your plate quicker, Mick Bauer talks about Samba security, Dan Sawyer interviews Cory Doctrow and Doc talks about how information technology can affect democracy and fix the national debt (just kidding about that last part). That and more for your reading pleasure in this month's Linux Journal.
