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OWASP Summit set for November in Portugal

jake — 2008-10-13T15:55:02+00:00

The Open Web Application Security Project is announcing its European summit to be held November 4-7 in Algarve, Portugal. The theme of the conference is "Setting the AppSec [Application Security] agenda for 2009". "This venue hosts a diverse selection of training courses along with technical and business tracks, making it THE place to learn about web application security and the resources OWASP has available for use today." Click below for the full announcement.

Bits from the Debian Eee PC team

jake — 2008-10-13T14:28:03+00:00

The Debian Eee PC team reports numerous successes in getting the various Eee PC models to run Debian. Most of the work has been on getting wireless networking working with in-tree (i.e. not binary) drivers, but there has also been work done on ACPI support. They are also keeping an eye on the 5-second-boot work that Arjan van de Ven and Auke Kok are doing. Click below for the full report.

uDig GIS: A First Look (Linux Journal)

jake — 2008-10-13T13:44:59+00:00

Linux Journal takes a look at the uDig GIS application as part of its series on geographic information systems (GIS). The article shows how to find and load GIS data, then display it in various ways in this free software application. "To those who are new to GIS I generally tell them it involves "mapping with a computer". While this description is a bit oversimplistic, it captures the broad purpose of GIS. A more accurate description is, as the folks at Quantum GIS say, that a GIS is a collection of software that allows you to create, query and analyze geospatial data. I would further add that one can integrate any kind of geographic information and then find relationships among that information, and display it how you wish."

Security advisories for Monday

jake — 2008-10-13T12:27:37+00:00

Debian has updated squid (denial of service), openldap2.3 (denial of service), ruby1.8 (multiple vulnerabilities), ruby1.9 (multiple vulnerabilities).

Mandriva has updated cups (multiple vulnerabilities), mono (HTTP response splitting).

Linux Summit will preview new advanced file system (SearchEnterpriseLinux.com)

jake — 2008-10-13T12:11:46+00:00

SearchEnterpriseLinux.com previews presentations by Ted Ts'o and Chris Mason at the Linux Foundation End User Collaboration Summit that starts on October 13. "But changing the file system to fix the scalability and functional limitations of ext3, the default file system in many popular Linux distributions, requires a significant education outreach. Because the consequences of data loss are so severe, data center managers are reluctant to trust their data to new file systems, Ts'o said. New-system information needs to be shared well ahead of time, including a roadmap of coming features so IT professionals know what to expect, he said. That's where the Linux Foundation's event hopes to make inroads."

Linux opportunity buried in Unix market share data (CNET)

jake — 2008-10-13T11:40:26+00:00

Over at CNET, Matt Asay sees opportunities for Linux in the recent news that IBM claimed 35% of the Unix server market for second quarter of 2008. "For those wondering how big Red Hat and Novell can become on operating-system revenue alone, keep that $61 billion number in mind. Most of that $61 billion is hardware-related, but it meant approximately $650 million in Linux server sales for Red Hat and Novell over the past year. As Linux eats into Unix, Red Hat and Novell can expect to grow linearly with it."

KDE Launches User Forum

jake — 2008-10-13T09:32:20+00:00

KDE has launched the KDE Forum, which is a MyBB-based forum for users to discuss KDE-related topics. In conjunction with the adoption by KDE, MyBB has released their software under the GPLv3. "Sebastian K�gler, member of the KDE e.V. Board of Directors explains where the new KDE Forum fits into KDE communication infrastructure: 'We've come to believe that mailinglist don't cut it for all users. KDE becoming increasingly widely used should also offer those that aren't familiar with the use of email for such discussions a place. The new KDE forum complements KDE's new end-user knowledge base Userbase that has been launched last month. At the same time, we're really happy to see that after our request the MyBB team has decided to release their forum software under the terms of the GPL.'" Click below for the full announcement.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 released

corbet — 2008-10-13T07:01:56+00:00

OpenOffice.org 3.0 has been released. "Right from the opening screen, OpenOffice.org 3 has a fresh new look, with a new start screen, new splash screen, new icons, and a host of usability improvements." Click below for the announcement which contains an overview of the new features in this release.

LK2008: The values of the Linux community

corbet — 2008-10-10T15:02:45+00:00

James Bottomley opened this year's Linux-Kongress with his views on the Linux community's values. What these values are is not entirely obvious. Other groups have well-articulated value systems which define them, but while the Linux community's values are not so clearly expressed, they are central to what we do. Click below, subscribers only, for LWN's coverage of the keynote.

Beta blockers? (Nature)

ris — 2008-10-10T13:47:20+00:00

The sub-title for this article is Proprietary data formats may be legally defensible but open standards can be a better spur for innovation. "Dan Cohen, director of GMU's Center for History and New Media, and Sean Takats, a GMU history professor, are also directors of Zotero: open-source software developed by the history centre that lets researchers organize and share their digital information iTunes style, whether it is in the form of citations, documents or web pages. Zotero is free and popular, and has attracted some 1 million downloads since its launch in October 2006. Thomson makes the proprietary bibliography software EndNote, and claims that Zotero is causing its commercial business "irreparable harm" and is wilfully and intentionally destroying Thomson's customer base. " (Thanks to jerbol)

Multi-Head, Multi-User Killer GNU/Linux App Languishes (LinuxMedNews)

ris — 2008-10-10T13:35:25+00:00

LinuxMedNews looks at multi-head, the killer application in health care. "Multi-head, multi-user systems running off a single PC. This is where multiple displays, keyboards and mice can be attached to a single PC with multiple users all working simultaneously from one system unit. This can dramatically lower the cost of an individual workstations as well as the cost to support individual workstations. This setup is becoming more and more viable as hardware power increases."

Security advisories for Friday

ris — 2008-10-10T13:20:07+00:00

CentOS has updated cups (several vulnerabilities).

Fedora has updated ruby (F9, F8: multiple vulnerabilities), condor (F9: multiple vulnerabilities), postfix (F9, F8: multiple vulnerabilities), dbus (F9: denial of service).

Gentoo has updated portage (privilege escalation).

Red Hat has updated cups (several vulnerabilities).

Ubuntu has updated ruby (multiple vulnerabilities).

Meeks: Measuring the true success of OpenOffice.org

corbet — 2008-10-10T08:10:02+00:00

Michael Meeks has taken a detailed look at contributions to OpenOffice.org and come away worried. "Crude as they are - the statistics show a picture of slow disengagement by Sun, combined with a spectacular lack of growth in the developer community. In a healthy project we would expect to see a large number of volunteer developers involved, in addition - we would expect to see a large number of peer companies contributing to the common code pool; we do not see this in OpenOffice.org. Indeed, quite the opposite we appear to have the lowest number of active developers on OO.o since records began: 24, this contrasts negatively with Linux's recent low of 160+. Even spun in the most positive way, OO.o is at best stagnating from a development perspective."

The 2.6.27 kernel is out

corbet — 2008-10-09T22:37:36+00:00

A bit later than expected, Linus has released the final 2.6.27 kernel. For those just tuning in, 2.6.27 includes (among many other things) UBIFS, support for integrity checking in the block layer, multiqueue networking, the ftrace tracing framework, the lockless page cache, the relocation of a lot of firmware, the GSPCA webcam driver set, and a number of extended system calls. See the always-excellent KernelNewbies summary for lots more information about this release.

Linux at 17 - What Windows promised to be (the Register)

cook — 2008-10-09T14:41:38+00:00

The Register reflects on the history of Linux. "Linux is what Windows had once promised to be - at least in terms of cross-platform support. In the wake of the PowerPC alliance from IBM, Apple, and Motorola in 1991, Microsoft made a commitment to support Windows NT 3.51 on PowerPC chips. Windows eventually added support for Digital's Alpha NEC's and SGI's MIPS chips. Workstation maker Intergraph ported Windows NT 3.51 to its Clipper chips and said it was creating a port to Sparc chips from Sun. Neither ports saw the light of day."