LINUX NEWS FROM O'REILLY NETWORK
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The Latest from http://www.linuxdevcenter.com and http://ONLamp.com
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Hello, readers. Welcome to the Linux Newsletter, where your
editor attempts to make this paragraph slightly interesting
every week. Now that the secret is out, here's what's new in
open source administration, development, and usage, as seen
on ONLamp and the O'Reilly Network this week.
An old idea--the human-writable web--has recently become new
again. Ward Cunningham's original Wiki implementation has
spawned thousands of imitator sites and dozens of clones and
reimplementations. If you've decided that you need a wiki for
your group, which software should you use? Shlomi Fish compares
a few of the best open source implementations and gives his
recommendations. Be sure to read the talkbacks for other
good opinions:
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/04/which_wiki.html>
In other news, Sam Smith's popular "The Month in BSD" column
has migrated to ONLamp's BSD DevCenter, at least for the month
of October. What happened recently in FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
DragonFlyBSD, and Mac OS X's Darwin?
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a//bsd/2004/11/01/october_news.html>
This week's book excerpt comes yet again from Understanding
Open Source and Free Software Licensing. Like the previous
excerpt, the desire for open content has moved far beyond just
software. Andrew M. St. Laurent's "Open Source and Free
Documentation Licences, Part 3: The Open Gaming License"
explores the OGL created by Wizards of the Coast to open parts
of the D&D roleplaying game system:
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/04/os_licenses_part3.html>
In this week's weblogs, Nat Torkington asks what your book pile
says about you:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5865>
Kyle Rankin adds vi keybindings to Firefox:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5869>
Dru Lavigne happily points to a downloadable BSD Success
Stories PDF:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5873>
Derek Sivers links to Tony Marson on database-driven PHP sites:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5885>
William Grosso reports from Bloggercon III:
http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5889>
Michael Brewer asks if votes are hackable:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5897>
Simon St. Laurent reminisces on a year of local weblogging:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5898>
This week's Open Source Project of the Week is Clam AntiVirus,
an open source lightweight e-mail attachment virus scanner.
<http://osdir.com/Downloads+index-req-viewdownloaddetails-lid-752-ttitle-Clam_AntiVirus.phtml>
That's everything for now. Stay tuned to learn more about home
automation and very small bootable Linux CDs.
Until next week,
chromatic
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Technical Editor
O'Reilly Network
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ONLamp.com and Linux Devcenter Top Five Articles Last Week
1. Which Open Source Wiki Works For You?
An old idea--user-writable web pages--has taken off again
recently. Wikis are becoming more popular as tools for
communication and collaboration. There are also several dozen
packages to create them. Shlomi Fish compares features of several
popular open source Perl, Python, and PHP Wikis.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/04/which_wiki.html>
***
2. Advanced Linux Installations and Upgrades with Kickstart
Unix is beautifully scriptable. That applies to installations
and upgrades, too. Fedora's Kickstart utility can automate
installing entire labs of computers, installing custom RPMs,
and even upgrading old versions. Ethan McCallum explains
advanced Kickstart techniques.
<http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/11/04/advanced_kickstart.html>
***
3. A Firm Foundation for the Linux Desktop
Nearly every advance of Linux, open source, and free software
on the desktop owes a debt to the X Window System. Too often,
this debt goes unacknowledged. With the birth of X.org earlier
this year, a foundational but once-stagnant project prepares
to improve itself and its code to help free desktops everywhere.
Andy Oram reports.
<http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/10/28/x_org.html>
***
4. OpenBSD 3.6 Live
Right on schedule, the OpenBSD team plans to release version
3.6 on November 1. Federico Biancuzzi recently interviewed
several members of the core team about new features and changes
in the code and the project.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2004/10/28/openbsd_3_6.html>
***
5. Using Design by Contract in C
Design by Contract is a programming approach that formalizes
the interface between callers and callees, leading to more
robust and disciplined code. If your language lacks formal
support for DBC, though, are you stuck? No--Charles Mills
describes the design and implementation of Design by Contract
for the C programming language.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/10/28/design_by_contract_in_c.html>
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