Sean Michael Kerner

For some Linux distribution projects, new releases come twice a year. That had been the plan for Gentoo Linux this year, until it canceled its current planned release — the second time it’s done so in the past 12 months. But the news doesn’t necessarily mean a setback for the project. Instead, Gentoo developers said […]

From the “do you save your passwords in your browser?” files: Firefox 3.0.2 just came out this week, but it’s going to be replaced next week due to an unforeseen Password Manager bug. The bug actually restricts users from accessing some of their passwords for IDN – international – domains and non ASCII characters. “There […]

The .ORG, Public Interest Registry (PIR) gTLD (generic top level domain) is perhaps best known as the non-profit registry for millions of organizations. It could also soon be known as a more secure domain space too, as .ORG adopts the DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions), a set of extensions used to add an additional layer of […]

Seeing the Fedora Project pass its five year milestone got me thinking about the early days of the community-based Linux distribution and how far it’s come. At the time of its launch, I was plenty worried. Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) was effectively killing off its namesake Linux distribution – Red Hat Linux — and turning […]

From the “I still prefer KDE, but still…” files: The latest and greatest version of GNOME is now out adding a whole bunch of new application and improving the Linux desktop experience for its users – or does it? Among the improvements in GNOME 2.24 that the GNOME foundation highlights on their new features page […]

From the “free is great, but open is best” files: If you ever wondered what type of application could be built on top of Google’s AppEngine, Google now has given us another example. Google Moderator is a new free (as in Beer) tool that acts as an online moderator for an event in that it […]

Despite a slowing U.S. economy, Linux vendor Red Hat continues to grow, thanks in part to uptake of its JBoss middleware solutions as well as an expanding business for its Red Hat Enterprise Linux solutions. But it cautioned investors not to expect an immediate return from its recent moves in virtualization and from other initiatives, […]

Cisco has always been in the business of connecting people with networking technology. The network — and how it and its tools can be extended — is now also the backbone for Cisco’s latest push into the world of enterprise collaboration. The company today is rolling out new updates to its Unified Communications platform (UC) […]

From the “time to update” files: Mozilla has issued four security advisories as part of its Firefox 3.0.2 and 2.0.0.17 updates, two of which are labelled as critical. MFSA 2008-41 details a privilege escalation issue by way of the XPCnativeWrapper. The flaw could potentially have allowed a maliciously crafted XSLT to create/run scripts that don’t […]

Novell is diving into the market for network access control (NAC) with its new ZENworks Network Access Control solution. The launch isn’t without its quirks, however. The idea behind Novell’s NAC is that it’s supposed to be easy to deploy and is suitable for heterogeneous network environments. However, while Novell’s solution is a software-based appliance […]

In the new browser wars, speed and technology are the key weapons employed by browser vendors. Sitting in the CTO chair of open source browser vendor Mozilla is Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and a former Netscape employee. A veteran of the first browser war which decimated Netscape and left Microsoft in command of […]

From the “bailout? what bailout?” files: Though the financial services market in the US is in bailout mode this week – the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) is hedging its bets — with Linux. CME trades in options and derivatives though I like to think of them mostly in the context of commodities. CME Group also […]