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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Greetings, readers. Welcome to the Linux newsletter from ONLamp.com.
This weekly e-mail discusses all sorts of topics in the areas
of open source development, administration, and usage. Here
are this week's new articles:
Does the future belong to dynamic languages? Many smart people
think so, but these languages need to work with existing libraries,
many written in C and C++. One mark of interoperability is
how much work it takes to write extensions for a dynamic language
in C. Garrett Rooney, an unabashed Ruby fan, recently explored
this idea in "Extending Ruby with C." He writes about his
experiences developing Ruby bindings for the GenX XML-creating
library:
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/18/extending_ruby.html>
One of the features of proprietary databases that open source
databases have recently started to add is replication, sharing
data between multiple databases to improve availability and
reliability. PostgreSQL's picking up replication through the
Slony project. A. Elein Mustain describes the ideas and goals
of the first stage of the project, as well as how to install
and use the software, in "Introducing Slony":
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/18/slony.html>
If you're new to open source and free software or still find
the dozens of OSI-approved licenses confusing, Stephen Fishman's
"Open Source Licenses Are Not All The Same" analyzes them along
four criteria. Stephen is an IP attorney and brings his experience
in law and writing to bear with practical examples of use and
obligations under various licenses:
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/18/licenses.html>
This week's book excerpt comes from the new third edition of
Managing Projects with GNU make. Andy Oram, the editor, writes
about why make is still useful and valuable, and Robert Mecklenburg,
the author, compares make favorably to Java's Ant--even for
Java projects. Agree? Disagree? This could be controversial.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/18/gnumake_3e.html>
In this week's weblogs, your editor opines on what makes a
good hyperlink in writing for the web:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5843>
Russell Miles commends Konfabulator's pre-emptive strike against
Mac OS X's upcoming Dashboard:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5943>
Derek Sivers understands Java better after studying PHP 5:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5946>
Niel M. Bornstein offers a solution to his virus problem:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5905>
Andy Oram recommends the new TUX magazine for desktop users:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5949>
brian d foy writes his own GMail notifier for non-Windows
platforms:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5950>
Timothy Appnel quotes Tim Bray as saying Atom doesn't need
shiny new features:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5951>
David Brickner explores the huge potential and underbuying book
market of OpenOffice.org users:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5956>
Ted Wallingford defends VoIP from FUD:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5958>
Kevin Bedell reprints part of yet another open letter to Sun from ESR:
<http://weblogs.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/5961>
This week's Open Source Project of the Week is XoopsForge, a
SourceForge-like plugin for the popular Xoops content management
system.
<http://osdir.com/Downloads+index-req-viewdownloaddetails-lid-761-ttitle-XoopsForge.phtml>
That's it for this week. Next week will be slower due to the
American Thanksgiving holiday, but watch for an interesting
article about how to start writing interactive fiction.
Until then,
chromatic
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Technical Editor
O'Reilly Network
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ONLamp.com and Linux Devcenter Top Five Articles Last Week
1. FreeBSD for Linux Users
BSD and Linux are both Unix workalikes. How different can they
be? In certain cases, very! Though the systems share a family
tree, their differences sometimes stand out. Dru Lavigne explains
FreeBSD's runlevels, startup scripts, kernel configuration,
and documentation systems to Linux users.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2004/11/11/FreeBSD_Basics.html>
***
2. Feather Linux: The Swiss Army Knife of LiveCDs
Bootable LiveCDs have made the lives of Linux dabblers easier.
They're also good for administrators and people facing system
recovery woes. Among LiveCDs, Feather Linux is a lean and
powerful tool. KIVILCIM Hindistan demonstrates how it can make
backing up and restoring partitions easy.
<http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/11/11/featherlinux.html>
***
3. Hacks for Smart Homes
Implementing home automation may be easier and less expensive
than you ever imagined. By using your computer, your home can
become much smarter. Gordon Meyer, author of Smart Home Hacks,
covers the basics of automating your home with MisterHouse,
an open source, home automation application for Linux, Windows,
and Mac OS X. Move a step beyond automatic lights to a home
that actually responds to stimuli.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/11/smrthome_hks1.html>
***
4. Introducing Slony
Slony is an experimental new feature intended to introduce
powerful replication to PostgreSQL. It's a complicated problem,
though. Elein Mustain introduces the Slony project, its aims,
and the goals of Slony-I, the first milestone.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/18/slony.html>
***
5. 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>
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