The GNU/Linux desktop lacks a font manager for design work. Ideally, such a font manager should support currently used font formats, including TrueType, Type1, and OpenType, and allow sets of fonts to be activated on the fly, so that system memory is not choked with rarely used fonts. Until now, the closest to this ideal has been Fonty Python. Now, however, newcomer Fontmatrix has proved itself a contender for the role.

Standing next to your laptop to control the slides during a presentation is not cool. Nowadays everyone uses a presentation device or their laptop's remote controller, but a presentation device can be expensive, few laptops come with a remote controller, and for those that do, Linux compatibility may be an issue. The Amora project turns your Symbian mobile phone into a Linux presentation device using Bluetooth.

Last week we took the eagle's eye view of the principles behind SELinux. Today we'll dig a bit more deeply into SELinux policies, and then fire up Fedora 8 and see what SELinux looks like in practice. I recommend using the latest Fedora version as a SELinux training tool, because Fedora has the most mature implementation and userspace tools. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS, the leading Red Hat clone, have similar SELinux setups to Fedora. Gentoo also has a nice SELinux implementation. I don't recommend starting from scratch. Start with a working setup, and then plan to spend considerable time learning your way around it, because it is a big complex beast.

I was informed...that windows 2008 is able to be installed without the GUI so I wondered. If the GUI is so good. If all programs and system configuration can be done through the point and click interface. Then why is Microsoft giving the option of installing windows 2008 without the GUI interface? Further why are windows aficionado's touting this as a "Good Thing (TM)"?

Forty-four percent of businesses would consider moving to an operating system other than Microsoft Windows in order to avoid moving to Vista, according to systems appliance management firm Kace. The reluctance to step into Redmond's latest OS could prove to be a boon for competitors like Linux and Apple, not to mention makers of virtualization applications.

"Apparently, if you get your iPhone + iPhone-specific subscription plan from Orange in France, your iPhone often receives SMS that the iPhone never shows. These SMS appear normally if you use your SIM card with another telephone. According to the french version of The Inquirer, these SMS are here to check the SIM card is used inside an iPhone..."

For french readers: http://formats-ouverts.org/blog/2007/12/05/1420-ces-formats-qui-ne-montr...

"The 3.0r1 point release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux is a maintenance update. It's including more than 40 bug fixes and security updates that came to our attentention after the 3.0r0 release. It is based on Debian etch 4.0r1. A link to download locations is available at the end of this announcement..."