One of my favorite console apps. Check it out, it’s fast, full of features and customizable.

CMus is a small and fast text mode music player for Linux and *BSD. Supported file formats include FLAC, Ogg, MP3 (via libmad), wav, and all module formats supported by libmodplug. Included output plugins are ALSA, ARTS, OSS, and Sun. It can be controlled through a UNIX socket. Background playlist loading and a metadata cache make loading files very fast. Playqueue, playlist filters and directory browser. Three playlist views are available: artist/album/track, shuffle list, and sorted list. There are three play modes: all, artist, album.

Features include:

* Input Plugins
FLAC
Ogg/Vorbis
MP3 (libmad)
Wav
AAC (libfaad)
MP4 (libfaad + libmp4v2)
.mod, .s3m, … (libmodplug, mikmod)
.mpc, mpp, .mp+ (libmpcdec)

* Output Plugins
ALSA
libao
ARTS
OSS
Sun

* Playing
Album/artist modes; playing within one album or artist
Play queue
MP3 and Ogg streaming (Shoutcast/Icecast)
Powerful playlist filters

* Interface
Easy to use directory browser
Customizable colors
Dynamic keybindings -
You can bind a key to any command, :seek +1m for example
Vi / less style search mode
Vi style command mode with tab completion

* Misc
Can run external commands for the currently selected files (tag-editor for example)
UTF-8 support
Can be controlled via UNIX socket using cmus-remote command
Known to work on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD

cmus homepage

I know there’s a portion of Ubuntu (and other distro) users who resent six virtual consoles running at a time, in addition to the X desktop in a default Ubuntu setup. I would agree that six is probably overkill, but removing them completely would be nuts.

First of all, on some slow systems, a tty is preferable (for me) to a terminal emulator. I have worked with some very, very slow systems where the time taken to work through a start menu and open a terminal emulator is longer than just jumping to a virtual console.

Furthermore, there are some very kewl console applications that aren’t tied to X, so if you work with a quasi-unstable desktop system, you don’t have to worry about something dying when X falls through.

Source: kmandla.wordpress.com/

GrumpySimon writes “The recent 2.1.1 release of the popular blog software WordPress was compromised by a cracker who made it easier for to execute code remotely. This is interesting because the official release was quietly and subtly compromised, and has been in the wild for a few days now. There’s no word on if any affected sites have been compromised, but anyone running WordPress is urged to upgrade to 2.1.2 immediately, and admins can check their logs for access to ‘theme.php’ or ‘feed.php’, and query strings with ‘ix=’ or ‘iz=’ in them.”

Technorati tags: Security, News

Source: WordPress 2.1.1 Release Compromised by Cracker

An anonymous reader writes “Michael Geist reports that the Canadian government has introduced new legislation that grants Vancouver Olympic organizers broad powers to police the use of any commercial use of the words associated with the Olympics. These incredibly include ‘winter, Vancouver, and games.’ As Geist notes, the government ‘has no time to deal with spam, spyware, privacy, or net neutrality, but commits to legislation on behalf of the organizers of a sporting event?’”

Jeeesh now they own winter, they can have it as far as I am concerned.

Source: Canadian Gov’t Grants Olympics Ownership of Winter

What happens when a free and open source software (FOSS) project attempts to introduce compensation for its developers? Because FOSS remains based largely on volunteer work, many worry that payment might demotivate both those who receive it and those who do not. However, community leaders who have observed how payment interacts with the FOSS ethos suggest a more complicated picture. Identifying four main types of payment — bounties, payment in kind, grants, and employment — these experts suggest that what happens depends on the type of payment, as well as on the individuals involved.

Source: Money or nothing? Trade-offs in FOSS compensation

Last year’s surprise partnership between software titan Microsoft and leading Linux distributor Novell was supposed to be a kind of peace treaty. Instead, it’s brought the open source software community to the brink of civil war, over a provision that could help Microsoft sue other open source software companies for patent violations. As part of the deal, Novell agreed to compensate Microsoft for features in Linux that Microsoft claims to have patented.

Source: Linux Community Still Outraged by Novell Pact

The GNOME project released version 2.17.92 of its popular Linux desktop on Feb. 28. This is the last unstable bugfix release prior to the 2.18.0 release, set for March 14, a project spokesperson said.

“We’ve added important bug fixes, great translations, [and] shiny documentation during the past six months,” the spokesperson said.

Source: Desktop Linux

You don’t have to be a geek to use Linux anymore. The open-sourse OS has evolved and many flavours are actually easier to use than Windows

P. SURDAS MOHIT

Special to Globe and Mail Update

With the recent release of the memory-hungry Windows Vista, many consumers are wondering whether they should upgrade or stand pat with XP. However, if you’re getting tired of the cost, restrictions, and bloat associated with Windows, I recommend a third option: taking Linux for a test drive.

Don’t you have to be some sort of computer geek to use Linux? At one time, the answer would have been an emphatic yes, but Linux-based operating systems have evolved to the point where this is no longer the case. In fact, the most user-friendly flavours are in many ways actually easier to use than Windows.

Source: Globe and Mail

Mozilla on March 2 released Thunderbird 1.5.0.10, a security and stability update for the popular open-source email client. Users of Thunderbird 1.5.0.x will receive an automated update notification within a couple of days, a Mozilla spokesperson said.

Users can also manually upgrade by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu on their existing Thunderbird clients, the spokesperson said.

Source: desktoplinux

How and why would I set a SUID/SGID bit on a file? What is such a bit?

Normally, when a program runs under Linux, it inherits the permissions of the user who is running it, thus if I run a program under my account, the program runs with the same permissions that I would have if that program were me. Thus, if I cannot open a certain file, the program I am running also cannot open the file in question.

Source: howtoforge.net