Monday, March 13, 2006
Rise, Weblogs, Rise
LINUX NEWS FROM O'REILLY NETWORK
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The Latest from http://www.linuxdevcenter.com and http://ONLamp.com
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Your Skills Are in Demand. More Skills. More Demand.
Choose from 45 webcasts organized by track--JSP, PHP, and
ColdFusion. Each track has been designed to take advantage
of your existing Web development skills and includes insightful
content contributed by Dr. Dobb's and O'Reilly.
http://www.oreilly.com/go/learn2asp_lnx
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Greetings, Linux newsletter subscribers. This weekly mailing covers the
entire LAMP world and beyond, as seen through the lens of ONLamp.com.
Here's what happened this week.
If there's a new shiny in the Linux world, it's probably the Ubuntu
distribution. It builds on the solid Debian foundation to add spit,
polish, and a rhythmic release cycle. Reports describe it as an excellent
distribution for people who Just Want Things To Work. Yet there's often a
bit of customization for security or preference. Carla Schroder explains
how to fine-tune your fresh Kubuntu installation:
<http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/03/09/tuning-kubuntu.html>
On the system administration side, consolidation is the old idea turned
new. That is, running a series of virtual servers on a single powerful box
has tremendous advantages. Not everyone wants to run virtual machines,
though. Sometimes you can get all of the advantages with simpler,
better-established technologies such as BSD's jails. Dan Langille shows
how to put the pieces together to run separate projects for separate
groups on the same machine while not worrying about security troubles:
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2006/03/09/jails-virtualization.html>
In weblogs this week, Kurt Cagle offers thoughts about complexity in
programming:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/9280>
The unmissable-in-a-crowd Robert Kaye writes obsessively about ETech,
including a conference wrap-up:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/9302>
Carla Schroder unearths Ubuntu's #1 bug:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/9295>
Timothy Appnel documents the warranty-voiding Makers Faire:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/9296>
Sam Griffith weighs the pros and cons of adding metaprogramming to Java:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/9305>
Your editor attempts to debunk the magic pixie dust claims of type
inferencing and program "correctness":
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/03/typesafe_correct.html>
Jeremy Jones praises the open source business model the TurboGears author
is exploring:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/03/the_open_source_business_model.html>
Your editor reviews the CPAN module KinoSearch:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/03/cpan_module_review_kinosearch.html>
Brian K. Jones offers a sysadmin tip to save you hours:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/03/a_sysadmin_tip_that_could_save.html>
Steve Yegge offers tips on interviewing programmers, especially for Ruby jobs:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2006/03/interviewing_ruby_programmers.html>
Stephane Faroult recommends analyzing surrogate key statistics in your databases:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/databases/blog/2006/03/check_your_counters.html>
That's it for this week. Be good to each other.
More CPAN module reviews on the way,
- c
chromatic
chromatic@oreilly.com
Technical Editor
O'Reilly Network
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Bill Gates in conversation with Tim O'Reilly and others at MIX:
Building the Next Web Now
LIVE IN VEGAS. MARCH 20-22: Microsoft's new MIX conference
is for developers, designers and business professionals who create
consumer-oriented web sites. MIX is a 72-hour conversation about
enhancing Web-based customer interactions. Attendees will have the
opportunity to hear Bill Gates, Tim O'Reilly, Amazon and other industry
leaders talk about the new and unique experiences that can be delivered
over the Web. MIX will focus on IE7, Windows Vista, Windows Media
Center & Xbox 360, InfoCard, Windows Presentation Foundation, the
"Atlas" AJAX framework and Windows Live!
http://www.mix06.com
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ONLamp.com and Linux Devcenter Top Five Articles Last Week
1. Fine-Tuning Kubuntu
Ubuntu is a well-maintained, well-organized Linux distribution. Kubuntu
adds the popular and powerful KDE desktop environment. As nice as Kubuntu
is, the default installation doesn't fit every user. Carla Schroder shows
how to get help, get access to more software packages, set up a firewall,
and review and get rid of unnecessary services.
<http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/03/09/tuning-kubuntu.html>
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2. Virtualization with FreeBSD Jails
Consolidating several small machines into one powerful one has advantages
in administration and resource usage. It also has implications for
security and encapsulation. FreeBSD's jails feature allows you to host
multiple separate services on a single machine while keeping them securely
separate. Dan Langille shows how.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2006/03/09/jails-virtualization.html>
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3. Ajax on Rails
XMLHttpRequest and Ruby on Rails are two hot topics in web development. As
you ought to expect by now, they work really well together. Curt Hibbs
explains the minimal Ajax you need to know and the minimal Ruby you need
to write to Ajax-ify your Rails applications.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/09/rails_ajax.html>
***
4. What Corporate Projects Should Learn from Open Source
Many corporate projects fail to produce quality software, yet many
large-scale open source projects succeed, and under much more difficult
conditions: no budget, a geographically distributed team, and a volunteer
workforce, to name a few. So how do open source project teams ensure
success? Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene introduce five basic
principles in their new book, Applied Software Project Management, that
will help any project succeed, open source or proprietary. The authors
detail these principles in this article.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2006/02/27/what-corp-projects-learn-from-open-source.html>
***
5. PHP Form Handling
If your PHP program is a dynamic web page (and it probably is) and your
PHP program is dealing with user input (and it probably is), then you need
to work with HTML forms. David Sklar, author of Learning PHP 5, offers
tips for simplifying, securing, and organizing your form-handling PHP
code.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2004/08/26/PHPformhandling.html>
***
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