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Upgrading Your Linux Box? Read Up on SELinux, and Improve Security

I just spent several days helping to upgrade an organization's servers from Red Hat Enterprise 3 to the latest version, Red Hat Enterprise 5.2. One of the most important, and impressive, issues we dealt with during this upgrade was SELinux, or security-enhanced Linux. SELinux offers a great deal of functionality, and helps to protect Linux boxes from a variety of threats. It forces system administrators to learn a new vocabulary, as well as permissions, logfiles, and programs with which they were previously unfamiliar. Fortunately, there are many good tutorials for SELinux on the Web.



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Keep Up to Date With Open-Source "Planet" Sites

When you're working with a commercial software company, it's easy to keep up with their latest news: Between the company's Web sites, e-mail newsletters, conferences, and (increasingly) blogs, you can find out what is happening, and prepare yourself accordingly. Life in the open-source world is quite a bit messier, of course, in that there often isn't any central location or source for news. One of the key tools that the open-source community uses to keep in touch is blogs -- but it's not always easy to find all of the blogs on the subjects that interest you. That's where blog planets come in, providing a one-stop aggregation of many blogs on a particular subject.



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Worry About Integration, Not Installation

Thinking about using open-source software in your business? That's a great idea, and might well save you money. But don't assume that the only cost will be installing and configuring the program. No, the biggest cost will be integrating your new program into your organization. The integration may well require a consultant, or an in-house expert in these matters. But even so, using open-source software almost guarantees that the integration will be easier and cheaper than would be the case with proprietary software.


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OLPC's Open Source Rift Deepens

The situation at One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the organization behind the $100 laptop, looks like it's going from bad to worse. As we've reported before, key personnel have recently walked out on the project.

At the center of the conflict appears to be the issue of how deep the laptop's open source roots should be.



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Will OLPC Abandon Open Source?

The $100 laptop project, otherwise known as OLPC, has faced a large number of setbacks since it was initially unveiled several years ago. The most recent such problem just occurred, when Walter Bender announced his resignation.

Did he leave because the project might abandon open source software? And what does this mean?



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Git with the Program

Many open source projects are switching from CVS and Subversion to newer, distributed version-control systems. One of those is Git, written by none other than Linus Torvalds, originally for use on the Linux kernel. Git is becoming increasingly popular for use on other projects, as well. Why?

The Internet has, of course, been essential to the growth of the open source movement. Most communication among the developers of an open source project takes place via e-mail, IRC, or even instant messaging.


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Linux is Truly Everywhere

As hardware gets smaller and cheaper, we can expect to see Linux in more and more unexpected places. Why is this, and how does this benefit open-source developers?

A few months ago, I was flying from Chicago to Tel Aviv. The airplane was one of El Al's newly refurbished models, with individual video screens and on-demand video screening. The advantage of such screens is that they give each passenger a choice regarding when and what to watch.



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