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Get Mandriva Linux Inside Community Magazine !

Mandriva Linux Community has released e-magazine dedicated to Mandriva Linux latest developments news (formerly known as Mandrake Linux). The publication of the magazine marks the resurrection of the Cooker Weekly News, which was discontinued a little while ago. The community driven effort hasn’t decided on scheduled release yet, as the editor wrote “If the project succeeds and catches attention, a new issue will be released as soon as we feel that there is enough content for it”. He also states that motivations should be the prior motor for new issues, instead of deadlines.

Stuffs included in Mandriva Inside first edition includes :

  1. Inverview with Darth Barth
  2. News From the Front
  3. Community, what’s that?
  4. Focus on Pinit
  5. Cooker Mailing List Digest

For the uninitiated, Cooker is the codename for unstable/experimental branch of Mandriva Linux that is currently in development. You can download Mandriva Inside from : http://www1.mandrivalinux.com/e-mag/e-mag-1-20060602.pdf

linux, mandriva, mandrake, magazine, e-magazine,cooker

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Get updated Debian applications with Backports

debian logo mypapitI guess everybody know about Debian GNU/Linux distribution. It is nice and simple to setup, not too newbie-ish, not to complex, just in the right balance. Debian also has an awesome package management system called ‘apt-get’ which manage your application/softwares inside your computer, apply updates, and deal with security patches. Debian has comprehensive repositories, spanning over 18 CDs for the i386 platform, making it one of the largest software repository among other GNU/Linux distros. Debian also support a total of 11 processor architectures, topping up other distribution which usually supports between 1-4 archicture (the usual architectures are : i386, amd-64, ppc,sparc).

Updated Softwares?

However, due to the complexities of supporting every platform, Debian rarely release software upadates to its users. This has cause problem to users who needs access to updated software or the much needed security patches. The usual applications request among others includes Openoffice, mozilla firefox, gaim, window managers (KDE,GNOME) and kernel updates.

Solutions to this problem?

While some people can live without software updates, there are people who needs updated software in order to keep up with the latest improvements and technology. Usually there a couple of choices for these group of people.

First, use the -sid (unstable/experimental branch) repository. You just need to edit your “/etc/apt/sources.list” file and uncomment sid-related repositories. Then you will need to run “apt-get dist-upgrade” to upgrade your distribution to -sid, the experimental Debian release.

The Backports.org solution

If you need to update only a handful packages critical only to your day-to-day work (and prefer to use a stable Debian release), then you can use Backports. In a nutshell, Backports are recompiled packages from testing (mostly) and unstable (in a few cases only, e.g. security updates), so they will run without new libraries (wherever it is possible) on a stable Debian distribution.

The website has an easy to follow instructions to use Backports apt-get repository to get updated software. The Backports is flexible enough that you can customize which software you want to be updated and the ones you wish to leave behind.

Final piece of advice

A piece of advise : while Backports provides an easy way to stay updated with your applications, it is advisable that you pick out single backports which fits your needs, and not to use all backports available there.

debian,backports, ubuntu, repository, repositories, sarge, sid

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Promote your blog through Blogtal.com (Blog Portal)

Hey, I just found out about this new cool website http://www.blogtal.com/, that can help expose your blog to greater viewers. Bloggers can promote their blog by adding their latest post to Blogtal’s listing through a form. Once filled, your post will be visible on the frontpage of Blogtal, and will be kept inside their database for at least 30 days.

Users of WordPress and MovableType can use the trackback feature to auto-submit their latest post to Blogtal. WordPress users can use Ah Knight’s Default Trackback plugin or Autotrackback plugin.

You can subscribe to the latest post from Blogtal (mostly malaysian blog) via its RSS feeds.

blogtal, blog, blogs, weblog, wordpress, aggregator, blogging

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Valentine’s Day, cards and flowers

Uh oh, It’s the second month of the year (February) and Valentine’s day is around the corner! It is a day which lovers in let each other know about their love, commonly by sending Valentine’s cards, flowers, candy, chocolates and other stuffs that would show their love.

Why do people celebrates Valentine’s day? Well don’t ask me about it, to me it’s another propaganda set by businesses in order to shoot the sales of the above-mentioned items, especially greeting cards and flowers. Celebrating valentine’s day is no more than wasting my time and energy by flushing my hard-earned money down the toilet drain.

I even read in Wikipedia that it is estimated approximately one billion valentine cards are sent each year world wide, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. The association also estimates that women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.

While in my believe that Valentine’s day is just another commercial propaganda, the origin of Valentine’s Day is somewhat vague at best with several stories on why people celebrate the day in the middle of February. Several sources includes : 1,2,3.

Personally, I think Valentine’s day is overrated and just another great ploy to get us to fork our money out unnecessarily for cards and candy, you don’t need a specific day to show your love to your lover, because if you do, then something is awfully wrong with you.

p/s: I only learned that Valentine’s day is celebrated on 14th of February about a couple of hours ago, yeah sounds unimportant isn’t it?

valentine, valentines, valentines+day, celebration, love, women, gift

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BackTrack – Penetration Testing (pentest) Live CD!

A quick check in DistroWatch today revealed that remote-exploit has made available its first public Beta release of BackTrack 3.0. The Live CD is a must for those who are interested in running security check up and/or penetration test (pentest).

The SLAX-based LiveCD combines the best of two GNU/Linux distributions Whax and Auditor that specialised in the same field. Combining the best features from both distributions, and paying special attention to small details, this is probably the best version of either distributions to ever come out.

The Live CD comes with the usual tools for security testing like vulnerability scanners, port scanners, network sniffers, wardriving tools, bluetooth snarfer as well as popular exploit archives (SecurityFocus, milw0rm).

Users who are interested with this distro can check out their official website at : http://www.remote-exploit.org/index.php/BackTrack

linux, security, distro, livecd, backtrack, slax, slackware

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Nokia releases Python for S60 source code (pys60)

Nokia has recently released the source code for its Python for S60 at Sourceforge.net. The source code is covered under Apache version 2 and Python open source license. This move will hopefully enable developers to learn and understand more about Nokia python implementations thus easing up module/extensions development.

Python for S60 SIS file and its source code and be downloaded from : Pys60 project page at Sourceforge.net

pys60, python, nokia, s60, symbian