An advantage to free software is that it is an environment where competition can thrive, choice is always available and different solutions exist for the same problem. However, it’s also fair to say t ...
Everyone likes pretty pictures. The newsagent’s stand is now crowded with glossy magazines, roadside advertisements glare out at you as you drive along the freeway, you see a wondrous mosaic as you lo ...
Sharing photos has become one of the more popular methods of sharing information on the internet. A wide range of different people, groups and organisations are using photo sharing as a way both to pr ...
The short of it: I can’t make my audio lectures publicly available as `.ogg`s because my university server doesn’t allow it. I can, however, make them available as MP3s. The issue—what’s more importan ...
The GRand Unified Boot loader, or GRUB, has all but replaced the default boot loader on many GNU/Linux distributions. It includes some conveniences over LILO, the LInux LOader. One advantage is not ha ...
Awk (and Gawk, the GNU alternative) are as old as the hills (well, as old as Unix) and remain as one of the original programmable elements of the Unix operating system, along with the various shells ( ...
Web Performance, Inc. has published a performance report comparing tests of Apache Tomcat on Windows and Linux, with interesting results. The report found that Linux was able to handle about 32% more ...
This article compares two development platforms: Java and Mozilla. The object of this comparison is not to establish which one is best, but rather to measure the maturity, the advantages, and the disa ...
Zope is a web application server, similar in concept to proprietary products like Cold Fusion. However, it is free software that is available under the GPL-compatible Zope Public License, which is ver ...
This article looks at the management of the private key for the Software Publishing Certificate (SPC). SPCs are used to digitally sign binaries that are produced by software development vendors. Digit ...
As I was preparing my fourth article in the "Towards a free matter economy" series (parts 1 and 2 are already published), I realized I’m continuing to flog the Python language. This is somewhat inevit ...
The truth is, I never learned much about email, nor really ever wanted to. I’ve been using it since the 1980s, and for most of that time, it just _worked_. So I took it for granted, just like the tele ...
The term _emulation_ means to either equal or exceed something or someone else. As computer jargon, however, _emulation_ means recreating another computer or console’s operating system on another syst ...
I recently spoke with Bruce Snyder of the Geronimo project about this open source Java app server under the Apache Software Foundation. My favorite quote from Bruce: >“I have a saying I've used for ye ...
As a college professor committed to the principles of the free software movement, I frequently find myself wondering how I can promote the cause from within the university setting. One obvious way is ...
The login prompt is a nice place to be. Poised, fingers on keyboards, ready to send mail, surf the web, or do a little programming. However, from power-on to login prompt there is a long road for our ...
If you ever worked on a free software project or if you have ever worked as a developer, you probably know that managing source code, patches, and software release cycles is not the easiest task to pe ...
You are a system administrator for a small company—the captain of the firm’s computers. Doing your job well means that you may sail through the seas of information technologies unhindered, in short, t ...
In this article I will describe an experience I had that began with the failure of some RAID5 disks at the Hospital of Pediatric Especialties, where I work. While I wouldn’t wish such an event on my w ...
Organizations of all sizes are beginning to realize how content and its reuse across the enterprise can improve productivity—and the bottom line. The need for change is driven by the desire to better ...