Linux isn't the only open source operating system around. The Berkeley Software Distributions have been around longer and offer many compelling features of their own. See how the "other half" lives in this introduction to the BSD variants.

NetHack is one of the oldest open source games around. But a few avid players have modernized -- or modded, as gamers would say -- the Unix classic, adding bitmapped graphics, sound effects, and music. Meet the developers of Slash'EM and Falcon's Eye -- some programmers that work hard and play harder.

Information is power -- but only if it isn't locked up. But how can organizations balance the need for ready access to critical data with the onus to protect that same information from misuse? One solution: hide the information in plain sight. Here's a primer on how to do just that.

After fifteen years, I'm paying for it. Sure, I could be patient, and maybe get it for free later, but I want it now -- and am willing to fork over cash to get it. So, with a satisfying click of the mouse, it's mine.

Die-hard Emacs users often make a point of doing as much work as possible directly in their favorite editor. Indeed, mighty Emacs lets you do pretty much anything on your local machine. But as the world has become more and more network-centric, odds are that you'll need to edit a file on a remote machine. Sure, you can start a shell within Emacs, ssh to the remote machine, and edit the file. But Emacs doesn't perform terminal emulation very well, so your choice of editors is quite limited.

When you type a filename on the command line (at a shell prompt), you may use filename completion to save time and typing. A popular feature, filename completion lets you type the first few letters of a file or directory name and use the TAB key to ask the shell to fill in the rest.

Last month's column introduced the powerful Grand Unified Boot Loader (GRUB), a utility that enables you to boot one of many operating systems when you start your computer. That column looked at basic GRUB configuration, including setting up GRUB on a floppy disk to boot Linux.

The last two Extreme Linux columns provided an introduction to the Condor workload management system, gave detailed installation and configuration instructions for Beowulf clusters, and showed the details of managing and running MPI jobs (parallel programs that use the Message Passing Interface) with Condor. This month, let's continue looking at Condor, explore some of its advanced features, and check out its powerful queuing capabilities for lots of serial tasks.

In the previous installment of this series, we implemented two very simple example programs, which nevertheless demonstrated quite a few of the core concepts of Qt programming. This month, let's will take a step back and look at some of the fundamentals of programming with Qt.

Roughly a year ago, we spent two months looking at logging web hits in MySQL, using Apache and mod_log_sql. In the October 2002 issue (available online at http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-10/lamp_01.html), we looked at what Chris Powell's mod_log_sql does for you and tried a basic configuration. (After that article appeared, Chris released a new version that fixed a few bugs we discovered in the process of writing that article. Consider upgrading if you haven't already.) Then in November 2002 (http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-11/lamp_01.html), we started building a basic web interface in PHP to present a view of the logged data. Using that framework, you could construct pages to list the most popular URIs, referers, and so on -- all in real-time. That, after all, is part of the beauty of mod_log_sql. You get the benefits of an SQL interface without any unnecessary delays.

One of the most famous stories of Linux advocate Eric S. Raymond is that hackers spontaneously pitched in and bought him a $1,000 iBook as a token of their esteem. While that story is amazing, it's not unusual or uncommon -- Raymond's geeky gift is just one of the concrete examples of the remarkable philanthropy of the hacking community, which Raymond calls a "gift culture," a society in which your reputation is made by what you give away rather than by what you keep.

In last month's column, I showed how to create a web site testing tool based on Perl's own testing framework and the WWW::Mechanize module. For reference, I've reproduced the code developed in last month's article in Listing One. The test code verifies the proper operation of a web site, in this case, http://search.cpan.org.

Not too long ago, email was a wonderful thing. It provided a fast and easy method to communicate with family, friends, and co-workers, regardless of timezone or location. Unfortunately, due to spam and viruses, many people now find email almost unusable. In this month's Tech Support, let's take back that inbox.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was, in short, Linux time.