Mar 292013
 

Article from Tcat Houser editor-in-chief of TRCBNews.com

Certainly I ignited a small fire regarding the Open Source Office Suites Versus Microsoft Office. Let me state several things for the record.

  • I applaud open source efforts
  • I enjoy playing with different versions of Linux
  • I NEED to use Microsoft Windows

Further, sometimes I NEED to use Microsoft Office.

I am creating this article in LibreOffice Version 4.0.1.2, in a RTF format. And yes, I am using Windows 8 64-bit edition. The reason I NEED Windows can be summed up in two words: Speech Recognition (SR).
Continue reading »

Flattr this!

Mar 292013
 

Article By Luca Grandi.

When open source started off in the 1980’s it sounded like a fairy tale world where good always triumphed, dragons were slain and all stories ended happily ever after. Although not a new concept, free sharing of technological information was a natural progression. If you consider that many things such as recipes, formulas and even patents have been shared since the beginning of time, you’ll realize that this was by no means a new idea.

In 1991, the Linux Kernel, which was started by Linus Torvalds, was released as a freely modifiable source code. Initially the license wasn’t the GPL, but in February 1992 when version 0.12 was released, Torvalds made sure he licensed it under the GNU General Public License. Torvalds was delighted that his kernel attracted much attention from volunteer programmers.

Up until this point no completely free-software operating systems were in existence due to the GNU’s lack of a working kernel, but the development of Torvalds’s kernel proved to be the final piece of the puzzle.

Continue reading »

Flattr this!

Mar 282013
 

maria

This required more time if compared to Libreoffice versus Open Office, but it seem that the critical mass of users of another piece of open source software is moving away from Oracle, I’m talking about Mysql versus MariaDB.

Mysql is probably the most used open source database, it’s used in most of the more successful LAMP applications, such as WordPress, Drupal or Magento, after all the M of LAMP was an acronim for Mysql until today.

All started back in February 2013 when two large open source projects, Fedora and openSUSE, announced their intention to abandon the venerable MySQL database, now a property of Oracle, and adopt instead MariaDB.

In short MariaDB is a community-developed fork of the MySQL relational database management system, the impetus being the community maintenance of its free status under the GNU GPL, as opposed to any uncertainty of MySQL license status under its current ownership by Oracle. The contributors are required to share their copyright with Monty Program AB more information on this project on Wikipedia

Continue reading »

Flattr this!

Mar 252013
 

Article by Jay Turla first published on infosecinstitute

A lot of sniffers, rootkits, botnets, backdoor shells and malwares are still on the wild today, which are used by malicious attackers after successfully pawning a certain server or any live network in order to maintain their access, elevate their access privilege, and spy other users in a network. In order to protect our network or server from such intrusions and further damage, there are free and open source detection tools that can be deployed and used as part of our security strategy. They are mandatory when our server or network is up and running, especially if a certain user is downloading a file which could possibly be malicious or harmful.

The advantage of using free and open source detection tools is that you obviously don’t need to pay a single penny and that tutorials are very easy to get and understand because manuals are included which are usually named as README so be sure to RTFM (Read the F****** Manual).

Here are some tools which could be of use to you guys
Continue reading »

Flattr this!

Mar 222013
 

Finally spring is come, it’s a good time to start to go out and do some walks, or perhaps it’s a good moment to take a look at the best articles published on linuxaria.com during this cold winter.

This is a short list of the most read articles during last winter:

7 – The Importance of Securing a Linux Web Server

With the significant prevalence of Linux web servers globally, security is often touted as a strength of the platform for such a purpose. However, a Linux based web server is only as secure as its configuration and very often many are quite vulnerable to compromise. While specific configurations vary wildly due to environments or specific use, there are various general steps that can be taken to insure basic security considerations are in place.

Many risks are possible from a compromise including using the web server into a source of malware, creating a spam-sending relay, a web or TCP proxy, or other malicious activity. The operating system and packages can be fully patched with security updates and the server can still be compromised based purely on a poor security configuration. Security of web applications first begins with configuring the server itself with strict security in mind.
Continue reading »

Flattr this!