Penquin Perks

Every system administrator dreams of the perfect box — the one that’s configured once and never again needs attentions. But, alas, the dream quickly ends when the pager goes off in the middle of the night.

But now you may get to enjoy more beauty sleep, thanks to Comodo and the company’s new Zero Touch Linux backoffice server line (http://ztl.trustix.com). Comodo’s new systems are packed with all the goodies an office needs: email, DNS, filesharing, FTP, Web hosting, databases, domain controllers, DHCP, firewalls, and more. For most offices and homes, a single server running all those tasks probably suffices.

Zero Touch Linux features a snazzy web-based management console (pictured), and is very reasonably priced at $99 per year. You can download and install Zero Touch Linux from an ISO image, stick it in a closet, and fuggedaboutit.

Your wish is granted. Long live Jambi.

Linux Magazine’s” Cool Project of the Month” award goes to the GNU Linux Sematic Storage System (GLScube, http://www.glscube.org/). GLScube aims to overthrow the traditional mindset of placing your files “somewhere,” such as a directory. Instead, GLScube’s advanced indexing and metadata techniques allow you to find things based on “what” your data is. You can tag data, place it in virtual containers and search in real time. GLScube behaves like a pseudo filesystem, constantly indexing and examining your data. GLScube even allows you to move the data to another system without losing functionality.

At the moment, GLScube is on the cutting-edge, but keep an eye on the project. It could revolutionize your desktop.

Loyal readers know my neverending love for all things wiki. Thus, this month brings great news. Two of the “corporate” wiki companies, Socialtext and Mindtouch, have released excellent open source offerings.

Socialtext Open (http://www.socialtext.net/stoss/, pictured) is based on the company’s enterprise product, and has an excellent, fluid GUI. Meanwhile, Mindtouch announced DekiWiki (http://opengarden.org/), another open source offering, and one based on a new framework called Dream. Dream, which is also open source, can leverage. NET languages in addition to PHP, and features a funky community site.

Check out both of these new wikis and see which one tickles your fancy. It’s a wiki, wiki, wiki world.

Google (http://code.google.com/hosting/) has jumped into open source project hosting, joining the ranks of Sourceforge and O’Reilly Media’s Code Zoo as a repository for all things coded. With more and more choices — and more and more competition — the community is sure to be the winner.

Based on Subversion, Google Code provides each project with up to 100 MB of storage and issue tracking. Google seems focused on simplifying the interface and improving both search and uptime.

Separately, Apple announced MacOSforge (http://macosforge.org/), a site for open source OS X projects. MacOSforge also employs Subversion for source control, and is certain to play a role in Apple’s recent release of its x86 kernel.

So much code. So little time.