Digg.com credits two particular features of its LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) server cluster for helping the news aggregation site maintain speedy performance in the face of high growth.

SMPlayer intends to be a complete front-end for MPlayer, from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features like support for MPlayer filters and more.

Getting closer to the 2.4 release, GIMP 2.3.16 is another development snapshot. The source code can be downloaded from the usual places. Check the NEWS file for an overview of the changes in this release. If you want to try this unstable development snapshot, please read the release notes for the development releases.

Changes in GIMP 2.3.16
======================

Some folks love life on the edge, so they run Debian Unstable, or the newest Ubuntu or Fedora releases. These are all wonderful Linux distributions, and under most circumstances are reliable enough.

Today we interrupt our regular schedule of distribution release announcements to draw the attention of readers to our newly updated Top Ten Distributions page. This page is an unbiased attempt to list the most widely-used distributions available today, complete with brief overviews of their history, purpose, pros and cons, available editions, and possible alternatives.

This guide will step you through the process of setting up a functional Cacti installation on CentOS 4.4 including the Plug-in Architecture, which will allow you to expand your monitoring solution.

Amarok is a fully featured music player well integrated into the KDE environment. Amarok uses a database (SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL) delivering fast collection access, and a wide array of searching/sorting methods.

Anybody who has tried to figure out why a Linux system is running short of memory can attest that the memory usage information made available by the kernel is, at best, difficult to use. Matt Mackall has recently been working on a set of patches aimed at improving this situation.

Every Linux distribution available seems to be coming out as a live CD. A reader (you know who you are has asked me how these live CD's work and what is the use of them. Here is my attempt at providing an answer.

If you are concerned about the privacy of your electronic documents and would like to make sure that only people who are authorized by you are actually able to read them, you have the option to use encryption.

Here's the reviews and impressions of Ubuntu 7.04. So far impressions from Technical Itch and ZDNet and reviews from Pinderkent, CLICK, Seopher, 2xITwire, The Tech Journal and Interact News. Screenshots at Phoronix, ZDnet and FOSSwire and posts from several bloggers.

n the Wife of Bath's Tale, part of Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", a knight caught in the act of raping a woman is sentenced to discover what women truly desire. To help our modern readers understand how that might be considered punishment, it's a lot like sending someone to discover why Windows crashes without explanation.

Linux Mint is the prettiest incarnation of the Ubuntu family, yet it doesn't seems to get the same attention as its *buntu parents. I've been wanting to be able to use Mint since my first little test run of a beta of 2.2, but at that time wireless support shattered those plans.

Years ago, I remember pontificating that open source would never touch the application market. Narrowly viewing open source through the prism of the day, I said things like this (to John Koenig at IT Managers Journal):

Last Wednesday, a company called Falling Leaf Systems announced the availability of an alpha of something called the Alky Project. The Alky Project has a lofty goal: to liberate DirectX 10 gaming from the confines of Vista and bring it first to Windows XP, and then to Linux and OS X.

Speaking to consumer PC mag PC Pro, security guru Eugene Kaspersky said that the lukewarm reception of Vista will result in defections to Mac OS and Linux, thus making them more attractive targets for malware writers.

Mozilla seems to be having a hard time pulling the plug on Firefox 1.5.

After today, the open-source group planned to stop shipping security and stability updates for Firefox 1.5 but now I'm hearing that support has been extended to the middle of May.

my friend andy came over the other day and told me a rather nice little kde related story that i thought i'd pass on:

a client of his has some linux servers that are sitting in a local colo centre. the isp running the colo messed up some internal routing and half his servers could no longer talk to the other half inside the colo (though everything was visible and reachable from the outside).

Microsoft Corp. today spelled out exactly how users of Windows Vista betas and release candidates can shift to the final code, and warned that beginning June 1, preview-equipped PCs will automatically reboot every two hours.

I made some progress -- and some discoveries -- today with my Xubuntu 7.04 Feisty installation on the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client.

First of all, while I think we can all agree that the GIMP, in its heaviness, doesn't really fit in with the Xubuntu philosophy of lighter apps for a lighter window manager.