Linux.com

NewsVac: News from around the Web

• Speaking Unix: The new and improved Vim editor 1 day, 4 hours ago
  
  If you've worked on IBM AIX, another flavor of UNIX, or Linux, you've more than likely used the vi editor. How could someone make a more powerful editing tool than vi, you may ask? The answer is Vim, and this article provides details on the many enhancements that have made Vim a highly used and acceptable editor in the world of UNIX and Linux.
• The LXF Test: OpenSolaris 2008.05 6 days, 10 hours ago
  
  Sun is battling hard to break into the open source operating system world with OpenSolaris. Juliet Kemp takes it for a test-drive, sampling its unique features and seeing how it fares against Linux...
• Unix and Linux Online Dictionary Shell Script 6 days, 14 hours ago
  
  Today's Linux/Unix bash shell script is is a blatant exploitation of a post we did, not too long ago, where we put together a Thesaurus shell script. This time we're creating a shell script to emulate a full-function dictionary. The actual online source we draw from (Dictionary.com) deserves the credit for knowing what virtually every word in the English language means ;)
• German Court: SCO Must Pay a Fine. Yes. Again. - updated 6 days, 16 hours ago
  
  SCO was taken to court again in Germany, by one of the companies that got an injunction years ago, Heise is reporting, and now it must pay a fine to the company, Thinking Objects Software GmbH. Three companies took SCO Germany to court back then, and this is one of the three. I'll show you a computer translation first of the headline in Heise. It is perfection:
• Interview with Andrew Tanenbaum, Creator of MINIX 1 week, 3 days ago
  
  I recently had the opportunity to interview Andrew S. Tanenbaum, creator of the extremely secure Unix-like operating sytem MINIX 3. Andrew is also the author of Operating Systems Design and Implementation, the must-have book on programming and designing operating systems, and the man whose work inspired Linus Torvalds to create Linux. He has published over 120 works on computers (that's including manuals, second and third editions, and translations), and his works are known all over the world, being translated into a variety of different languages for educational use universally. He is currently a professor of computer science at Vrije University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• DefCon 16: Hackers and a Gag Order in Sin City 1 week, 3 days ago
  
  In many ways the virtues that have brought Linux from a Unix look alike pet project to a competitive operating system are the same as the ideals behind DefCon. The community stood on each other's shoulders and developed piece after piece of software to fill in the gaps that were found through use. Programmer's built on the ideas of others creating tighter and tighter code to support an increasingly complex framework. Originally that was the theme of this article when I had begun thinking about writing it. The things that I saw at DefCon were every bit of the ideals I went up there to find and more...
• Absolute Nonsense - More Weekend Unix and Linux Levity 3 weeks, 3 days ago
  
  This week, I stumbled upon Two sites that had me working overtime trying not to laugh out loud at my desk. Nonsense humor isn't for everyone, but I find it the most enjoyable kind. It's goofy, it's random and once something gets me going I sound like I'm having a massive asthma attack while I'm trying to force myself to not laugh. Thank God I do this during my lunch break, when nobody cares to stop and see if I'm okay.
• Monitor Linux / UNIX DNS Server / Network Traffic In A Real Time 3 weeks, 3 days ago
  
  dnstop is a great tool when maintaining a DNS server. Log file can give out required information but dnstop is just like top command for monitoring dns traffic. It is a small tool to listen on device or to parse the file savefile and collect and print statistics on the local network's DNS traffic. You can see information about all DNS clients, DNS queries and much more with this tool.
• The Linux Saga: boot loader, initrd & Sys V 1 month ago
  
  Linux was filling up the memory. The boot loader was fetching more and more kilobytes of code. Thoughtlessly, without emotion. But what kind of emotions can we expect from a boot loader, honestly?
• OpenSolaris 2008.11 - A Preview For The Storage Admin 1 month, 1 week ago
  
  Many reviews have been written about OpenSolaris since its release, but all of them barely tread beyond the desktop aspect, with the obligatory screenshots of the GNOME environment and a high-level description of only the major features most are already familiar with, or at least have heard of.
• SCO goes down and Sun’s in Trouble 1 month, 1 week ago
  
  The decision is in, and SCO has gone down in defeat. The U.S. District Court in Utah has ruled in favor of Novell in SCO vs. Novell, the keystone case in SCO’s long, and ultimately unsuccessful war against Linux.
• Why Is So Hard for Windows Users to Understand That Linux Is Not Windows 1 month, 3 weeks ago
  
  This is just a rant (hopefully it will be regarded as pertinent and non-'laming') on why Windows users try Linux and return frustrated to Windows after several hours or days. I won't praise Linux and the way it works, I won't even compare and say 'here Linux is easier because ...', instead I have a few questions for all of you who blame Linux for not being and behaving like Windows. The following issues address the problem to the Windows users who had their first computer with Windows pre-installed and were simple beginners not only in the computing world, but in Windows as well.
• Speaking UNIX: Just a few clicks 1 month, 3 weeks ago
  
  The IBM AIX operating system has kept to what's important: stability, functionality, robustness. And it has done it by keeping a strong command-line interface (CLI). If you never learned to use the CLI or need a refresher on its basics, read on.
• Sun sheds light on its open-source future 1 month, 4 weeks ago
  
  "Sun UK's chief open-source officer, Simon Phipps, has a high-profile role to play as the company aims to complete its move to 100 percent open software development. Echoing the words of James Gosling, the father of the Java programming language, Phipps said that, after more than a decade of Java development, the time is right for "the next chapter" in software programming .... "
• Simple Perl Script To Ease Console Server Use On Linux And Unix 2 months ago
  
  Well, it's been a good long time (almost a week) since I've posted anything but numbered lists of, hopefully, useful information. It's about time for a little scripting. So, just to maintain my sanity (if not your own - assuming you follow this blog a bit, for which I thank you), today I'm putting up a little Perl script I wrote to maintain connections to a simple Cyclades console server. It can be re-worked fairly easily to connect to multiple console servers of any kind.
• More News