Commercial Linux distributions have come and gone, but through it all, the non-commercial Debian project has forged ahead. Here's a look at where it's been and where it's going.

Creating multithreaded programs can seem challenging at first. We help you sort through the problems and point you on the path to finding the solutions.

Sun's proprietary language and Open Source may seem mutually exclusive. They're not.

Web Services have received al- most as much press coverage as the declining stock market in the last 12 months. This has inevitably led to a lot of hype and confusion about what the technology can and cannot do. Before examining the really useful and valuable attributes of Web Services, it's important to first explain exactly what they are.

If you fall on the vi side of the "Great Editor Debate," then hopefully you're using vim (http://www.vim.org). It's got all the features of vi and more. One powerful feature is called syntax highlighting; it helps immensely when programming because it provides additional visual clues when editing source code.

Having built a Beowulf cluster using instructions found on the Internet or in popular magazines, some zealous individuals are disgusted to discover that their favorite word processor and spreadsheet packages will not run on their powerful new creation.

Your program has compiled with no errors. You type its name and watch it run. It seems so simple, but there's a lot that had to happen behind the scenes at the time the program was compiled in order to make it look so easy. For one thing, in order to make it possible for the kernel to properly load and execute your program, the compiler toolchain has to know exactly how the kernel will expect the new process's virtual address space to look. In other words, the toolchain has to be able to build the executable according to specifications that the kernel understands and expects.

Last month we looked at basic user authentication with PHP. The methods shown were useful for simple applications that require only minimal security. More complex applications, however, tend to require a more flexible and robust authentication system as well as session handling, permissions, and so on. Building such a system on your own would probably require a lot of time, during which you'd be reinventing wheels (and bugs). This month we'll look at PHPLib and some of the features you could take advantage of.

Java is great for solving many kinds of problems, but it isn't the first programming language that comes to mind when application performance is a critical issue. Sure, you can try to work around this with more powerful hardware, but at some point, a program written in Java just isn't going to run any faster.

Sometimes solving little problems can be fun. You stare at the project requirements, then stare at the available tools and figure out how to bridge the gap from the tools to the problem solution. However, sometimes I get frustrated when I'm treading new ground, because the task needs to be done yesterday. So I'm always on the lookout for little snippets I can reuse for solving a particular style of problem. With this in mind, I'd like to share with you some snippets I hope you can reuse, since I spent a bit of time inventing them in the first place.

Absolutely! Many people wonder if it's possible to change the video mode that console-level text is normally displayed in. The answer is, "Yes."

CodeWeaver CrossOver Plug-In

Welcome to an issue of Linux Magazine with special focus on the co-dependence of Linux and Java. Regular readers of LM know that I believe that Linux and Java need each other, and this issue is a dedicated attempt to help bring the two communities closer together. Actually, given the enormous overlap that already exists between the two communities, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that this issue represents an attempt to reflect that overlap in a public fashion.

Welcome to our newest feature in Linux Magazine, the Project of the Month. If you've ever visited Freshmeat (http:// freshmeat.net) or SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net), the open source world's two most popular software directories, you know that there are simply too many interesting projects to keep an eye on. Each month we will highlight one open source project selected by our editors.

Some readers have written to me to complain about my negative attitude. Really folks, I'm not down on Linux -- I'm simply cynical about Linux. Of course, I'm cynical about all technology, so that shouldn't alarm anyone.