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openSUSE Ends EULA

Just as those of us in the U.S. were preparing to pop our turkeys in the oven, the hard-working fellows at the openSUSE Project — the community organization behind the openSUSE Linux distribution — were lifting the lid on their own creation: a brand new license for openSUSE 11.1 — that doesn't involve a EULA.

StudioDave Does A Hardware Review And Meets Ubuntu 8.10

A few months ago I started sensing the need for a replacement for my aging and ailing HP Omnibook 4150. That machine's audio capabilities were negligible even with external hardware, but it had been serviceable for writing articles and as a portable MIDI composition environment. Alas, after years of travel and abuse the Omnibook's hard drive gasped its last breath of life. I had no fear for my data, the drive had been backed up, but clearly the time had come to buy a new portable computer.

Mozilla McAdd-Ons: Over A Billion Served

There are few places one can go where a gleaming pair of yellow arches cannot be found proudly declaring some variant of "Over 99 Billion Served." Now browser-maker Mozilla has something in common with McDonaldland: As of last week, Mozilla has officially served up their billionth add-on.

Use the date Command to Measure Elapsed Time

When running bash scripts that take a long time to run it's often useful to know how long it took for the script to run. In addition to the overall run time, it's also often useful to know how long certain parts of the script took to run. The time command doesn't really help because it's meant to time a single command, not a sequence of commands. By using the %s format

Interrogating a Linux Machine

The other day, a client called upon me to perform a hardware and software inventory on all of the computers on his network. There weren't that many machines to inventory, but we needed to gather quite a bit of information about each one.

Fedora Plays King of the Mountain

Anyone who has been involved with Linux for more than a few minutes is aware that there is a — sometimes blindingly — wide array of distributions available for the end user to choose from. Within the Linux community, there is a certain amount of — good natured, we think — competition among distributions for market share, and that competition heated up last week as Fedora Linux declared itself king of the Linux mountain.

SCO v. Novell is Final – For Now

Way back in July, the word rang out that SCO — the arch-villains bent on squeezing every dime they can out of Linux — had been vanquished by the valiant legal team at Novell to the tune of $2.5+ million. Now comes word that the victory is final — or at least, as final as can be expected.