Practical Technology

for practical people.

December 16, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Two other great Linux distributions: MEPIS & Mint

I just reviewed three of the most popular Linux distributions–Fedora, openSUSE, and Ubuntu–and each one is great for the right user. That said, there are many other excellent distributions, so let me tell you about two of my other favorites: MEPIS and Mint.

MEPIS is easily the most obscure of my favorite distributions. Unlike most Linux distributions, it has neither a company nor a community behind it. MEPIS is almost entirely the product of one developer, Warren Woodford.

Warren, after playing with SUSE and Mandrake (now Mandriva Linux), decided he could create his own distribution that met his needs better and so started what became MEPIS, also known as SimplyMEPIS, a Debian Linux-based desktop distribution.

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December 16, 2009
by sjvn01
2 Comments

3 top Linux distros go for different users

At first glance, there’s little to differentiate between the latest releases of the top Linux distributions: Red Hat’s Fedora 12, Novell’s openSUSE 11.2 and Canonical’s Ubuntu 9.10. They each use the latest releases of open-source applications and are based on recent Linux kernels. Each of the distros also includes open-source applications such as OpenOffice and Firefox. However, a closer look reveals real differences — in fact, each is meant for a different audience.

Underneath the hood, each of the three uses the 2.6.31 Linux kernel, but above that, their differences begin to surface. Fedora and Ubuntu, for example, use GNOME 2.28 (the latest version) for their default desktop, while openSUSE uses KDE 4.3.1.

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December 15, 2009
by sjvn01
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Another Day, Another Adobe Security Hole

Poor Adobe, they’re just not doing well with security lately. No sooner do they patch a bunch of serious Adobe Flash Player security bugs, than another zero-day exploit is unveiled. This time Adobe Reader and Acrobat are the targets, and regardless of whether you’re running Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows, you’re vulnerable.

What makes this even worse is that, like Flash, almost everyone uses Adobe Reader to read PDF (Portable Document Format) files. So, in short, almost everyone could be tripped up by this security hole.

Symantec staffer, Joji Hamada, uncovered this newest Adobe bug just in time for the holidays. Hamanda reported that “We received a tip from a source that there is a possible Adobe Reader and Acrobat 0-day vulnerability in the wild. We have indeed confirmed the existence of a 0-day vulnerability in these products.”

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December 14, 2009
by sjvn01
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SFLC hammers GPL violators

Almost everyone uses Linux thanks to its growing popularity in consumer electronics in everything from TVs to DVR (digital video recorders) to DVD recorders to you name it. Some companies, however, think that they can use Linux and open-source software for their products without releasing the source code or, in some cases, paying the creators. Wrong. The SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) is lowering the boom on more than a dozen companies including Best Buy, Samsung, Westinghouse, and JVC, which have violated the GPL (Gnu General Public License).

Bad news guys, you can’t get away with it. These companies, according to the SFLC, have ripped off BusyBox’s GPLv2 software tool collection. The SFLC announced that they were suing these companies because they had ripped off BusyBox, a popular collection of Linux/Unix utilities which is known as the “Swiss Army Knife” for embedded Linux. To be exact, these companies have been accused of using BusyBox illegally in such devices as “Best Buy’s Insignia Blu Ray DVD Player, Samsung HDTVs, Westinghouse’s 52-inch LCD Television, and more than a dozen other products that the defendants have continued to sell without the permission of the software’s copyright holders.” Specifically, the companies behind these, and almost 20 other products, aren’t living up to the terms of the GPLv2, which states that anyone can view, modify, and use the program for free on the condition that they distribute the source code to customers.

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December 14, 2009
by sjvn01
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Scareware gets Scarier

There I was doing some research on a story, well actually looking for the latest Dr. Who episode, when I was presented with a message that my computer might be infected by a virus and it was being scanned. Yeah. Right. This was on one of my Linux desktops and it’s no more likely to get a virus than my Pittsburgh Steelers are to win the Super owl this season.

What was actually happening was that I’d stumbled over a site trying to scam me into buying, at best, bogus anti-virus software, and, at worse, infect me with malware and steal my credit-card information. I’m not the only one. The U.S. Government’s Internet Crime Complaint Center just reported that this kind of scareware is getting to be a lot more common. Indeed, the “FBI is aware of an estimated loss to victims in excess of $150 million.”

I strongly suspect far more money has been lost than that. These fake virus warnings are very hard to get rid of once they appear on a Windows PC. If you try any of the usual ways to close a program or window nothing is likely to happen. Your only sure way of escaping from one is to re-boot your computer. What a pain!

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December 13, 2009
by sjvn01
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Opposition mounts to Oracle’s MySQL acquisition

The EC (European Commission), the European Union’s top competition authority, isn’t crazy about Oracle buying Sun. You might have thought it was just open-source advocates objecting to the deal out of the fear that Oracle, the world’s biggest proprietary DBMS (database management systems) company would close down the most popular open-source DBMS. You’d be wrong. Microsoft wants to block the deal too.

As Mary Jo Foley reported recently, Microsoft is arguing that Oracle shouldn’t be allowed to buy Sun. According to my sources, the reason why Microsoft wants to block the deal has nothing to do with MySQL remaining open source. It’s all about making sure Oracle can’t use MySQL as a low-cost alternative to SQL Server on the low end.

Microsoft’s only toe-hold in serious DBMS work is in the SMB (small-to-medium business) space. Open source or not, a low-price MySQL with Oracle branding could boot Microsoft out of this line. They really, really don’t want to see that.

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