2004.05_Rock Linux, Realbasic, Giantdisc.pdf

NEWS

Software

Software News

Back to Basics?

REAL Software, Inc. announced the

availability of REALbasic 5.5, a tool for

creating cross-platform software. The

Professional Edition allows you to

develop Linux desktop and server appli-

cations on Macintosh and Windows

systems, and provides a conversion util-

ity to convert and migrate Visual Basic

applications to Linux.

REALbasic 5.5 runs on x86 Intel plat-

forms with either Red Hat Enterprise

Linux 3 or Suse Linux 8.1 or better.

REALbasic 5.5 should also work on other

Linux distributions with the GTK+ 2.0

(or higher) and CUPS libraries installed.

The software supports standards such

as SOAP, XML, SSL, HTTP, SMTP, POP

and UDP. Additionally, REALbasic 5.5

includes a single-user database engine

which is available for both the Profes-

sional and the Standard Edition. A new

plug-in provides native access to Oracle

8i and 9i on Windows and Mac and also

connects to Sybase and MySQL data-

bases. REALbasic 5.5 offers full support

for older versions of Windows and pro-

vides an integrated debugger which

allows remote debugging from either

Windows or Macintosh systems.

REALbasic 5.5 is available via the

company’s online store and costs $99.95

for the Standard License and $399.95 for

the Professional License. It’s also possi-

ble to download a free demo version,

which is valid for 30 days.

GiantDisc

GiantDisc is a package of jukebox soft-

ware tools. It provides some scripts to

manage and play mp3s, flacs, and oggs.

A Palm remote control application allows

you to fully control the mp3 server with-

out having to attach a screen or

keyboard. Simply store your music files

on one or more hard disks – track and

album information are stored in a

MySQL database. Other features include

FreeDB (CDDB) support, lyrics manage-

ment, a web interface,

networking support and

synchronization of inde-

pendent GiantDisc

servers. GiantDisc also

allows you to record CDs

and import/export mp3

and ogg vorbis tracks.

It’s recommended that

you use a large hard disk

and a good soundcard,

although most of the on-

board sound chips are

sufficient these days. Network support is

optional, although this might become

useful in case you want to upload the

music tracks, make backups, and admin-

istrate the system remotely. You will

need a Palm handheld (PalmOS 2.0 or

higher) and to connect it to the Giant-

Disc server. Serial and USB cables have

been tested, as well as TCP/IP over Blue-

tooth, WLAN, and GPRS.

You will need a running Linux system

including MySQL (version 3.23.02 or bet-

ter), Perl (at least version 5.005), some

Perl MySQL interface modules and an

mp3, ogg, or flac player. CD ripping

tools, an audio mixer, and some pack-

ages for the Web interface, the LCD

display, etc. are optional

requirements. If you want to

be able to shut down the

server using your Palm, you

will also need the usershut-

down tool.

The GiantDisc homepage

presents you with a list of

tested configurations, describ-

ing various setups with

different Palm models, com-

munication setups, and server

specifications. GiantDisc is

available under the terms of the GPL

license and can be downloaded from the

project’s web site. The website also has

detailed documentation and links to var-

ious third party packages.

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http://www.giantdisc.com/

http://www.realsoftware.com/

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What You See Is What You Get

Lindows.com has published a first public

beta version of Nvu (“N-View”), a com-

plete web authoring system for Linux.

Nvu is based on the Mozilla platform

and its Gecko layout engine and com-

bines web file management with

WYSIWYG editing.

Nvu supports HTML, XML, CSS and

JavaScript and provides you with

enhanced handling of forms, frames and

templates. It’s possible to edit several

documents at once. For every new docu-

ment Nvu opens its own tab and creates

its own history having separate

undo/redo stacks.

Nvu offers an integrated FTP site man-

ager and a CSS editor. The editor

provides you with a clear and intuitive

graphical user interface, which makes it

really easy to use – even for people with-

out technical expertise, or knowledge of

HTML. Future releases will integrate the

ability to call W3C’s HTML and CSS val-

idator from within Nvu.

Lindows.com has hired Daniel

Glazman, the former chief architect for

Mozilla Composer, to be the lead devel-

oper and maintainer for the Nvu project.

The Linux distributor has also announ-

ced that the Nvu code will be merged

back into the main Mozilla CVS tree.

Ve rsion 0.1 (for Linux and MS Win-

dows) can be downloaded from the

project’s web site. Nvu is open source

and published under the MPL/

LGPL/GPL.

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http://www.nvu.com/

http://lindows.com/

May 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

■

Software

NEWS

Burning down the House

The K3b team members have been work-

ing hard lately – the major release of 0.11

has been followed by several minor

releases (current version was 0.11.6 as

this item went to press) with lots of bug

fixes and nice new features.

K3b is KDE’s CD and DVD burning

application and provides a clear GUI

(graphical user interface) to programs

such as cdrecord, cdrdao, and growisofs.

It’s a comfortable tool for beginners, and

provides reasonable default settings for a

quick start. For advanced users, it is

possible to configure all the steps and

options, which is also great for

troubleshooting.

K3b 0.11 has a new look designed by

Everaldo, creator of KDE’s Crystal icon

set. Users who prefer the old look can

switch back using the newly integrated

theme manager. The new release

includes a completely reimplemented CD

Copy facility including multisession and

enhanced audio CD copy. Audio de-

coding has seen major improvements

such as generic resampling support for

all decoder plugins and for mono files.

Additionally, K3b 0.11.X supports 8bit

Wave files and has a FLAC decoding

plugin.

DVD burning has improved as well.

There is a new option to ignore the speed

settings for DVD writing, since some

writers have problems with that. Copy-

ing of bootable DVDs has improved,

since DVD copy now determines the

proper track size.

Follow the links in the download sec-

tion of K3b’s web page to find packages

and the source code. There you can also

find links to KDE 3.2 RPMs.

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http://www.k3b.org/

Ticket on the Beach

Looking for an Open Source trouble

ticket system? Version 1.2.2 (code-named

“South Beach”) of OTRS ( O pen Source

T icket R equest S ystem) has just been

released.

OTRS collects incoming support

requests, such as mail, telephone calls

and faxes. For every inquiry, a so-called

trouble ticket with a unique number is

created and stored in a common pool.

Members of the support team can pick

the tickets out of this pool and handle

Meet the Gnomes!

GnomeMeeting 1.00, also known as the

“Thanks Fred Release”, is ready. The

video-conferencing and VOIP/IP-tele-

phony application allows you to make

audio and video calls to remote users

with H.323 hardware or software such as

Microsoft Netmeeting.

GnomeMeeting was launched by

Damien Sandras back in December 2000

and has grown over the years. It sup-

ports modern video-conferencing

features, such as registering to a direc-

tory, gatekeeper support, multi-user

conference calls, using modern Quicknet

telephony cards, and PC-To-Phone calls.

Included in version 1.00 are several

new features, such as a redesigned

configuration assistant and a redesigned

preferences window. GnomeMeeting 1.00

also provides a new status support as

well as audio and video device plugins

with native ALSA support and a new

manual.

The download area of the project’s

website provides packages for all major

Linux distributions, the source code and

several audio and video plugins.

Rock ’n’ Roll

ROCK Linux 2.0 (code-named “Rafaella”)

was released during the “Chemnitzer

Linux-Tag” in Germany. The distribution

build kit allows users to configure their

personal build of ROCK and create their

the request via a web interface. The sys-

tem is highly customizable and can

handle up to 20,000 tickets a day. It runs

in several languages and provides a web

interface which works well on many

browsers.

OTRS is distributed under the GNU

General Public License (GPL) and has

been tested on Linux, Solaris, AIX,

FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS 10.x and

Windows. Various packages, the source

code and an online demo version can be

accessed via the project’s homepage.

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own distributions. The new release

reunites the two development trees,

bringing the desktop ROCK Linux devel-

opment series back into teh ROCK Linux

fold.

Following the 18th Chaos Communica-

tion Congress (18C3) in 2001, the ROCK

Linux developers agreed that a redesign

of many parts was necessary to produce

a flexible build kit. ROCK Linux 2.0 uses

the new GEM (GEM Elementary Module)

package format to provide more meta-

data for the end-user, as well as

dependency resolution during the instal-

lation. It supports multiple architectures,

embedded systems and clusters. In-

cluded are extra C libraries such as diet

libc, a libc optimized for small size.

Binaries, source code and a handbook

can be accessed via the homepage.

http://www.gnomemeeting.org/

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http://otrs.org/

http://www.rocklinux.org/

www.linux-magazine.com

May 2004

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