GoboLinux is a unique distribution in many ways. It's built from scratch following the Linux From Scratch procedure and uses custom boot scripts, personalized directory structure, and a simple yet comprehensive source-based dependency-resolving package management system. Read more at Linux.com »

If you want to encrypt your sensitive files so that no one can access them without your personal password or decryption key, you have several options. But if you want a free, cross-platform, open source encryption application, try TrueCrypt. Read more at Linux.com »

Ten well-known companies within the open source community have pooled their resources to form an advocacy group designed for companies to adopt open source solutions for their business needs. While at first blush, the Open Source Alliance (OSA) may resemble similar advocacy groups, OSA says they plan to take up where others have left off. Read more at Linux.com »

Like many companies, Light Crafts releases its flagship application -- the RAW photo converter LightZone -- for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. But although the Windows and OS X versions of LightZone cost hundreds of dollars, the Linux version is absolutely free. It is a lucky break, too, because LightZone is a powerful tool that bests many of its expensive competitors on both quality and ease of use. Read more at Linux.com »

Ubuntu CTO Matt Zimmerman has announced two Ubuntu Technical Board decisions that will affect the upcoming Feisty Fawn release, due out in April of this year. For the Feisty release, proprietary video drivers are out of the default install, and the PowerPC port of Ubuntu is being downgraded to an unofficial release. Read more at Linux.com »

Klik is unique among software installation systems for Linux, in that each package installed through klik is self-contained, isolated from the rest of the operating system. Klik isn't a package management system; rather it's an application that lets you download and run software without installing it. Read more at Linux.com »

You suck on electric guitar. If you are not aware of that now, you will be after playing Frets on Fire -- a cross-platform, GPLed music game from Unreal Voodoo, where your PC's keyboard is the instrument and you play lead. Read more at Linux.com »

One business that relies heavily on open source software is Genuitec, the company that produces the proprietary subscription-based MyEclipse interactive development environment. Low-cost MyEclipse adds functionality to Eclipse, an open source application development software framework. Genuitec co-founder and Vice President of Technology Todd Williams says his company is able to keep prices affordable because it avoided using venture capital money, and because Genuitec itself is built completely on open source. Read more at Linux.com »

LOS ANGELES -- The fifth annual Southern California Linux Expo last weekend at the Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel brought in more than 1,200 paying attendees. SCALE featured a wide range of talks on topics from Inkscape to OpenNMS, and an exhibit hall with about 70 projects and companies from the Linux and open source community. While the quality of the talks varied, the show was a good opportunity to meet and learn from other Linux users. Read more at Linux.com »

Fourteen months ago, the Autopackage project was small and active, and members sounded optimistic about its success. Now, although the alternative installer project continues, progress has almost come to a halt. The #autopackage channel on irc.oftc.net sits vacant most days, the developer blogs cover almost anything except the project, and commits to the source code repository have become rare. Formally, the project is still alive, but the major contributors all agree that it is faltering. So what happened? Read more at Linux.com »

This week FSF Europe (FSFE) announced the release of its Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA), a form of copyright assignment in which a free software project can place its collective copyright under the control of a single organization or trustee. The agreement is designed to reduce the problems in managing copyrights in large projects, and to reconcile differences in copyright worldwide. However, exactly how important, useful, or necessary the FLA is depends upon whom you talk to in the free software community. To some extent, FSFE even seems to be operating contrary to the advice of the original Free Software Foundation in the United States. Read more at Linux.com »

Transferring files from one computer to another on a network isn't always a straightforward task. Equipping networks with a file server is one way to simplify the process of exchanging files, but if you need a simpler yet efficient method, try Woof -- short for Web Offer One File. It's a small Python script that facilitates transfer of files across networks and only requires the recipient of the files have a Web browser. Read more at Linux.com »

Yesterday, Linspire and Canonical issued a joint announcement that Linspire would begin to base its distributions on Ubuntu rather than Debian, and that Ubuntu users would be able to use CNR to install proprietary applications and drivers, starting with the Fiesty Fawn release. Read more at Linux.com »

A lot of people have bemoaned the lack of women participating in open source communities, but Sulamita Garcia is one of the few who have stepped up to do something about it. A Slackware user from Florianopolis, Brazil, Garcia has been heading up LinuxChix Brazil for four years. Read more at Linux.com »

STUX is a Slackware/Knoppix-powered live CD with the Morphix-like ability to build a custom ISO. While the combination has high potential, this implementation leaves something to be desired. It's worth the experience if you enjoy using new distributions, but if you're looking to replace your current desktop OS, look elsewhere. Read more at Linux.com »

After a long and arduous journey that included a suspended validation last year, the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) has announced that OpenSSL has regained its FIPS 140-2 validation and is now available for download. The validation process, which normally lasts a few months, took an astounding five years to complete, and those involved with the projects say they are already devising ways to avoid such long delays in future validations. Read more at Linux.com »

Nationwide Insurance and Financial Services, a $21 billion company with 30,000 employees, has turned to virtual servers running Linux to gain more control over computing power and expenditures. Read more at Linux.com »

System-wide security solutions such as SELinux, AppArmor, Bastille and grsecurity can, in most cases, make your Linux desktop more than reasonably secure. But there are still cases where file or directory encryption is necessary. Here are some tools that can help you when you need to move files outside of your home computer, carry personal data around with you on a pendrive, or send email messages containing sensitive information. Read more at Linux.com »

If you still dig the old-style arcade games, you owe it to yourself to check out Kobo Deluxe, an improved version of XKobo with sound and better graphics. I ran across Kobo Deluxe when I was looking for a game similar to Namco's arcade classic Bosconian. Your mission? Blow up the fortresses and move on to the next level, to ... blow up more fortresses. OK, so it's not exactly Shakespearean story development, but what do you want from a retro arcade-style game anyway? Right -- fast-paced action and an ever-increasing high score, which Kobo Deluxe delivers in spades. Read more at Linux.com »

With the Sonnet library for KDE 4, developer Jacob Rideout hopes to reinvigorate the field of desktop linguistics by adding automatic language detection and other innovative features. Sonnet is to be for KDE 4 what KSpell 2 is for the current version of the K Desktop Environment, providing spellchecking facilities to applications as diverse as the Konqueror Web browser, Kopete instant messenger, and KWord office software. Unlike KSpell, however, it will also provide grammar checking, multilingual tools, and perhaps even translation, dictionary, and thesaurus functionality across all of KDE. Read more at Linux.com »

Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) is sponsoring a plan to encourage and popularize the idea of open source -- for hardware components. The organization released a draft of an open source license for computer hardware this month, and issued a public call for comments on the draft. The new license is already drawing criticism from prominent members of the open source community. Read more at Linux.com »

The ROX Desktop is a lightweight alternative to GNOME or KDE built around the ROX-Filer file manager. The project's name is an abbreviation of "RISC OS on X." The ROX Desktop's performance is reminiscent of IceWM, and it's noticeably faster opening programs than GNOME or KDE. However, its speed comes at the expense of a needlessly redundant default configuration, and some users may balk at some of the assumptions its design makes about how they prefer to work. Read more at Linux.com »

Dave Freese has just released version 1.2 of Fldigi, a popular new program for Linux and FreeBSD which enables amateur radio operators to join their radios and their computers at the hip and create a new kind of ham shack: a digital ham shack. Here's the story behind both the rising popularity of "sound card" digital modes in amateur radio and how Fldigi lets you enjoy enjoy them on Linux. Read more at Linux.com »

Many Linux apps let you manage your movie collection, or your book collection, or your music collection -- but Data Crow is one of the few that handles all of the above, plus software and images. It also puts a lot of import tools at your fingertips that can save you from entering information about your media manually -- including importing information directly from online services and text files, and extracting information from music files. Read more at Linux.com »