Linux Journal - The Original Magazine of the Linux Community

uDig GIS: A First Look

James Gray — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:06:32 +0000

Part of an ongoing series of on open-source geographic information system (GIS) programs, this article offers an introduction to uDig GIS. uDig is for GIS users of all levels, from beginners to advanced.

Linux Journal Live - Oct 9, 2008

Shawn Powers — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 01:17:34 +0000

The October 9, 2008 edition of Linux Journal Live! Associate Editor, Shawn Powers, and Kyle Rankin, "Hack and /" columnist and author of Knoppix Hacks, Linux Multimedia Hacks, Knoppix Pocket Reference and others, discuss Linux distributions.

Venezuela Gets It

Phil Hughes — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:21:27 +0000

No matter what else you may think of Hugo Chávez (probably bad if you get your information from the U.S.

Why eBay Should Open-Source Skype

Glyn Moody — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:34:13 +0000

eBay is not going through the happiest of times. Not only has it found it necessary to make 1000 people – 10% of its workforce – redundant, it has had to own up to a serious breach of trust with its Internet telephony program, Skype.

Bash Extended Globbing

Mitch Frazier — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:17:30 +0000

Wildcards in bash are referred to as pathname expansion. Pathname expansion is also sometimes referred to as globbing. Pathname expansion "expands" the "*", "?", and "[...]" syntaxes when you type them as part of a command, for example:

$ ls *.jpg # List all JPEG files $ ls ?.jpg # List J

Clickjacking! Noooooooooo!

marcel — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:00:30 +0000

As if you didn't have enough to worry about, with the stock market crashing and all your savings going south . . . U.S. CERT issued a warning about a new browser exploit called "clickjacking". Worst of all, it even affects Linux browsers. Yikes! Jeremiah Grossman, founder and CTO of WhiteHat Security, U.S. CERT said, "Clickjacking gives an attacker the ability to trick a user into clicking on something only barely or momentarily noticeable. Therefore, if a user clicks on a Web page, they may actually be clicking on content from another page."

Compiz Killed My Video Card

Mitch Frazier — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:57:20 +0000

Having recently installed a new version of Linux I thought I'd see how progress on Compiz, the compositing window manager, was going. I tried it first on a system with an ATI video card and was met with a wonderful blank screen. Since I really didn't want to spend a bunch of time trying to figure out what was going on I just put things back to normal and got X working again.

The Green Penguin: Going Green With Google

James Gray — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:23:45 +0000

"The Green Penguin" is a new blog devoted to ‘green’ IT related to Linux (though at times loosely). This week´s topic is about Google and General Electric´s recently announced plan to promote a ‘smart’ electric power grid and thus encourage greater use of renewable energy.

Stallman vs. Clouds

Doc Searls — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:07:17 +0000

I respect Richard Stallman for the same reason I respect gravity. The man is a force of nature. He is like the iron core of the Earth: fixed, central, essential. So, when I read a story like "Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman", which ran in the Guardian last week, I take notice. And I'm not alone. A search on Google for stallman "cloud computing" brings up 142,000 results.

Examining the Compilation Process. Part 1.

Mike Diehl — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:51:50 +0000

This article, and the one to follow, are based on a Software Development class I taught a few years ago. The students in this class were non-programmers who had been hired to receive bug reports for a compiler product. As Analysts, they had to understand the software compilation process in some detail, even though some of them had never written a single line of code.