Whether you want to customize Knoppix, respin an existing distribution of the open-source operating system, like Puppy Linux, or are intent on creating your own package from scratch, we'll walk you through the process.

XMPP is an open technology for instant messaging and presence information. It provides the opportunity to build an open source and free messaging server to handle many applications in varied environments. We are going to setup a XMPP server on a LAN to handle communications between LAN and WAN contacts. By running our own server we can gain some insight into how XMPP and Jabber work, create an efficient and easy to use internal communications setup, connect our server to other servers and services including WAN communications, and last, but not least, we can have our own private communications using SSL. Read on for more on XMPP and how we actually set it all up.

For a few years now, I have worked on a replacement for the trusty old way of organising the Debian boot. Did you ever make a package with an init.d script, and wonder which sequence number to pick for your script?

"Here is a simple way to get apache2 installed with a self signed SSL cert in Gutsy. First install all the dependencies..."

"...My personal favourite is GNU/Emacs. It took me some time to get familiar with this thermonuclear word processor, but after that I found it a wonderful tool. You can actually run Emacs on your N8x0 - see the screenshot of Emacs 23 from CVS. But that's not what I'd like to discuss here. For maemo software development..." -- via http://agilejava.com/blog/?p=146

"Large documents are almost impossible to write without outlines. There’s just too much to fit in your head. Outlines help you work with a structure, so that you can see the big picture and how sections fit together. Outlines are also surprisingly useful when brainstorming. You can work with varying levels of detail, starting with a high-level overview and successively refining it, or starting with the details and then letting the structure emerge as you organize those details into groups. Emacs has one of the most powerful outline editors I’ve come across. Although word processors like Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer support outlines too, Emacs has a gazillion keyboard shortcuts, and once you get the hang of them, you’ll want them in other applications as well.

"The problem with the REST folks these days is that they are just hell-bent on having constructive conversation all the time. This piece should have been the pudding-pack that started the cafeteria food fight but, no, everyone decides to concentrate on the one concrete critique of WS-* mentioned in the entire rant, kicking off a level-headed debate about description languages, documentation, and service discovery..."

Generally there are 3 installations: OSX, Windows and Linux, and the latter is the most easy one.