New Products

If Q were to make a Linux server to fit into 007's jacket pocket, it might look something like the LinkGear Series 100. This compact device, so sayeth JJPlus, is “the first affordable replacement for Intel-based Linux PC servers in low power, small form factor applications.” Measuring in at 38mm x 203mm x 112mm (1.5" x 8" x 4.4") and weighing 0.55kg (1.2lbs.), this little guy is a standard Linux server, sporting an SH4-7751R RISC processor that consumes 2 Watts of power. Other standard features include a pre-installed Linux OS (2.6.12 kernel) based on GNU glibc and RPM; built-in firewall and wired or wireless gateway features; two mini-PCI slots for wireless networking; USB 2.0; and a NAND-flash block device driver compatible with fdisk, lilo and ext3 filesystem tools. Optional features are an internal IDE/CF-ATA storage adapter, an 802.3af-compliant PoE module, a Wi-Fi mini-PCI card and more. Also included are complete native and cross-development tools, sources and binary RPMs. Mr Bond, you've foiled the bad guys again, this time with the firewall in your pocket!

www.linux.jjplus.com

Your valiant editor dithered a bit on whether to include this item, the Mandriva Kiosk service, thinking it more at home in TUX, our sister publication for the Linux desktop. As you can see, the desktop enthusiast in me cannot be subdued! According to the company, Mandriva Kiosk is “a Web-based one-click software installation service” that offers “access to the latest versions of the most popular applications through a simple installation process”. Packages with multiple dependencies, such as KDE and GNOME, are aggregated into bundles and treated as a single entity from the user's perspective. Although the initial range of available applications is a bit sparse, the offering will presumably grow over time. Although many of you may balk, arguing that you lose valuable control of your system, I call on your inner evangelist. Have you not a mother-in-law you wish to lure away from the dark side? Subscriptions to Mandriva Kiosk start at 29.90 EUR (around $38 US) per year. Only newer releases of Mandriva Linux are supported.

kiosk.mandriva.com

Good golly, so many wonderful Linux books, so little time! We hope to better use this space to tell you what's hot off the press and perhaps worth a further look. Now, it is a good sign if, in today's competitive market, a book makes it into a 3rd edition, which is the case with Mark Sobell's A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux: Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The publisher, Prentice Hall, describes the book like so: “In 28 chapters, this book takes you from installing a Fedora Core (updated for Fedora Core 5) or Red Hat Enterprise Linux system through understanding its inner workings to setting up secure servers that run on the system, as well as working with GNOME, KDE, Samba, sendmail, Apache, DNS, NIS, and iptables.” This new 3rd Edition includes beefed up info on system administration, security issues, networking and server setup. The publisher also notes how Sobell “knows every Linux nook and cranny”, indicating that this book is especially comprehensive. A Practical Guide spans nearly 1,100 pages and includes a DVD with the full Fedora Core 5 OS.

www.phptr.com/title/0131470248

Those in our community involved in data and image analysis—researchers, scientists, engineers and educators, among others—will be interested in the latest update to the VisiQuest software application from AccuSoft. VisiQuest's raison d'etre is to perform complex image and data analysis tasks using visualization. The latest release, per AccuSoft, features a “toolbox with 60 additional functions for image registration and segmentation tasks”. Included therein is a plethora of new functions or “glyphs” that help solve the challenge of mapping data of a rotated image to a fixed image. What's more, users can utilize these glyphs in a drag-and-drop environment without the need for proprietary programming languages; users can also roll their own glyphs in C, C++ or Perl. In addition, AccuSoft announced a price reduction and a new, bundled purchasing option. Supported platforms include Linux, Mac OS, Windows and UNIX.

www.accusoft.com