There's been a lot of discussion about a Debian bug going around.
The bug affects SSL certificates on servers, which means visiting a compromised server could leave your info in the open, without you having the faintest idea.
Here's a quick rundown: "All RSA & DSA keypairs generated with OpenSSL on affected systems (any Debian-based system between roughly Sep-17-2006 and May-13-2008) are trivial to guess. The fix is not so simple. After updating OpenSSL on an affected system, you need to figure out if any of your crypto keys are affected." [...] "You need to regenerate all such keys and replace your SSL certificates as well. "
That's all very techy, but if you're running a Debian server, you know exactly what's up.
Now there's a handy Firefox extension that will alert you when visiting a potentially compromised site. The extension works a little magic in the background to determine if the SSL certificate you're trusting to keep your transaction safe is one which could be dangerous, thus giving you a little added protection from the rough and ragged world of cybercrime.
It's a weird phenomenon. Nearly every computer platform steals another one's look. Vista gets accused of trying to look too much like OS X. Linux desktops get accused of trying to look like Vista (except when they're accused of ripping off OS X).
Well, okay, we guess really what that proves is that there's at least something distinctive and cutting edge about OS X's look. Love it or hate it, everyone seems to think everyone else is ultimately copying it.
There's no denying, the first time we saw OS X, our hearts beat a little faster when we saw the dock.
Until now, though, the dock concept was really sort of a nuisance to get working effectively in Linux. There is the Avant Window Navigator, and though it does the trick quite nicely, many newbies (or extremely busy people) said the tweaking factor left them wanting something a little less involved.
We've been using Cairo-Dock of late, and we really like it. The beauty of it extends far beyond the physical appearance. There are source packages, and there are Debian binary packages. Installing isn't that difficult. We even installed it, quickly and with great success, on a 64 bit system (and yes, we'll show you how.)
We're taking a little departure this week from our sometimes successful attempt to be non-distro-specific, and looking at a neat little program that runs on Debian and Ubuntu flavors (including Ubuntu-derivatives, like Mint).
Have you ever had the joy of installing restricted or proprietary drivers on Debian or Ubuntu? Most of the time, it really does work like a charm. Sometimes though, something doesn't go quite as planned. We had this happen quite recently with Mythbuntu and an onboard NVIDIA card. The restricted drivers wouldn't work right, and the very latest from NVIDIA compounded our problem.
In our desperation, we tried Envy. Envy is the creation of Alberto Milone. It is an unofficial (so please note you are using it at your own risk) installer for both NVIDIA and ATI drivers. For those of you who are interested, it's a Python/PyGTK application.
We're guessing that most of you just want to get your freakin' video drivers installed, though.
The ever-creeping Debian project has released a major update to their production-ready operating system, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0. Although it's not considered a "new version" by the team -- few things are -- it is more or less equivalent to a Windows service pack.
The update includes an update to the Debian Installer, and many bugfixes and security patches. For more information, check out the release notes here.
Debian provides the framework upon which several other Linux distributions have been built, most notably, widely-loved and rarely critiqued Ubuntu.
Freespire 2.0, the free version of Linspire, is out. And unlike previous versions of Linspire and Freespire, which were built on Debian, Freespire 2.0 is built on top of Ubuntu. (Which, for those keeping track, is based on Debian).
But that doesn't mean Freespire will look or act just like Ubuntu. Freespire 2.0 uses the KDE desktop, which looks a bit more like the Windows and Mac desktop interfaces. Of course, you can also install Kubuntu, a version of Ubuntu that uses KDE, but Freespire's got a few other tricks up its sleeve:
Proprietary software like Java, Flash, and Adobe Acrobat are included.
Proprietary drivers are included for graphics, WiFi cards and other hardware.
Proprietary codecs for listening to MP3s, Windows Media, and other file formats are included
The CNR Plugin provides free access to open source and commercial software.
Open source purists may want to steer clear of Freespire 2.0 for its liberal use of closed source, proprietary software. But it looks like the operating system may hit that sweet spot between free and functional.
A new blog from the Debian project promises to show you one Debian package in depth each day. For the uninitiated, Debian's "packages" are like Windows installer executables or MSI packages, only Debian packages are smart enough to trace and download any other packages they rely upon to function.
Each package profiled by Debian Package of the Day is accompanied by an "elaborate description" and screenshots, so you can gain a pretty good idea of what you're installing before you pull the trigger. There are way too many Debian packages available to keep track of; We wish DPotD the best of luck in cataloging the high points.
Last week the folks over at Creative Commons released version 3.0 of their licensing suite for user-generated content. The bulk of the changes center around clarifying the existing licenses, and addressing the growing internationalization of Creative Commons content. With 3.0 also comes a compatibility structure that will allow them to identify and certify other licenses as CC BY-SA (Attribution Share Alike) compatible. They have also attempted to address concerns voiced by Debian and MIT.
Since the beginning of the Creative Commons in 2002, the language of the licenses had always been based around US copyright law and "generic" in nature because it was not specific to any particular country's laws. So when it came to applying CC licenses to works from other countries, the licenses had to be "ported" to conform to the law of those countries. In fact, the core license has been ported to 30 other countries, or "jurisdictions", to date. To this end, CC have spun the old "generic" core license into two parts: "Unported" (which is based around the language of international intellectual property treaties.) and a separate United States specific license.
If you are already licensing your content under a CC license, you may want to take a look at the updated licenses. But if you haven't taken a detailed look into the Creative Commons yet, there's no time like the present.
And you thought HP was squeezing all the money it could from your poor wallet when you purchase its ink replacement cartridges. Well apparently, there's lots of profit margin in offering support services for Debian, one of the top ten most popular (entirely free) open source distributions, and the basis for the exceedingly popular Ubuntu. HP reported $25 million in sales in its European, Middle East and Asia market segment in 2006 as a direct result of its Debian support. Cha-Ching! That's no pocket change and even exceeds HP's own forecast.
Clearly, there are alternatives to commercial distributions and companies who tool up to support them can add a nice, fat profit to their bottom line.
The answer is on Debian. The OS isn't happy with Mozilla's recent hardened stance on their trademark, and doesn't even want to use the Mozilla logos in their distributions. Debian plans to change the name of Firefox in their distros and think it will only take a week to complete. Mozilla doesn't want Firefox to be marketed inside Debian without the logo. It seems that the Debian folks don't like the idea of patches and updates going through Mozilla first. Red Hat and Novell are already doing it. So if you Linux buddies told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it? Well, Debian wouldn't, or so it looks right now. I'm taking bets on names, how about Fiber-fox, or Firbuntu? No? Fine, I give up. Any other clever names for what to actually call Firefox in its altered form from brilliant minds out there?
Wow, I am pretty blown away. Almost unanimously everyone said that Ubuntu is the best Linux distro for almost everything you would want to do. I am already a Ubuntu fan, and I thought there would be a huge list of distros because there are so many out there. Ubuntu is the distro I used at work to recover old PC data, and fix PCs when even windows was trashed. It is definitely a killer build and deserves all the recognition it gets. If anyone out there is wondering which Linux distro is good for your uses, this should be proof enough. Other distros that made the list, but were all soundly spanked by Ubuntu are:
Thanks to everyone for your comments and thoughts on your favorite Linux flavor. I will be awarding stars as soon as I can, but I believe that feature is down at the moment.
When I installed the OS on my laptop I let Ubuntu pick the BitTorrent client for me. That wasn't a mistake; Ubuntu's default, BitTornado is no slouch and I've been happily using it for quite some time.
This weekend I started downloading AMD 64 images for my much anticipated new machine. As I blissfully piled up simultaneous torrents I was reminded again that, as happy as I was with BitTornado, I'd really like an all in one solution as opposed to a client that starts a new window for each and every download in progress.
Freeloader is the scratch to my itch. A simple app that minimizes to the Gnome system tray and allows individual control of each torrent it is downloading. Freeloader is beautiful in its simplicity, and utterly utilitarian in function. Best of all, for the Ubuntu or Debian user, it's just an apt-get away. For other Linux variants, the requirements are fairly straightforward: Python 2.3 or 2.4, PyGTK 2.6, GTK+ 2.6 or greater and the BitTorrent Python module version 3.4
There's been a lot of discussion about a Debian bug going around.
It's a weird phenomenon. Nearly every computer platform steals another one's look. Vista gets accused of trying to look too much like OS X. Linux desktops get accused of trying to look like Vista (except when they're accused of ripping off OS X). 
We're taking a little departure this week from our sometimes successful attempt to be non-distro-specific, and looking at a neat little program that runs on Debian and Ubuntu flavors (including Ubuntu-derivatives, like Mint).
The ever-creeping Debian project has released a major update to their production-ready operating system, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0. Although it's not considered a "new version" by the team -- few things are -- it is more or less equivalent to a Windows service pack. 
