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Why ReactOS leads the way with their decision to hire full-time developers

Software has become part of our lives. Businesses, homes and even individuals more and more rely on software to meet their goals and serve their needs. Recently, I had tried to have a discussion with people who are active in the FLOSS ecosystem about if and how the development process of free software could be [...]

Lessons learned from a recent OS upgrade

From the time I had set up my first server at home over a decade ago, I’ve performed numerous operating system upgrades. Usually, it used to take me several hours – if not days – to complete each upgrade and make sure that everything would work as expected. During all these years, I’ve been working [...]

Restore original configuration files from RPM packages

By default, when the user installs software through the RPM Package Manager or through YUM, usually, the software’s configuration files included in the RPM do not replace the existing configuration files on the filesystem, but, if they differ from those that currently exist, they are saved with the rpmnew extension. In case the rpm is [...]

The 1st Rule of Discussion

I cannot overstate how disappointed I am after having a discussion with people who tend to partially mix the various declarations of Rights and the Law in order to make a point valid enough to justify their actions. I am not really the one to tell whether such behavior derives from competence or incompetence. What [...]

Speed up Apache by including htaccess files into httpd.conf

It is widely known that, if virtual hosts in Apache (httpd) are configured to permit vhost administrators override specific configuration options at the directory level using htaccess files, the web server consumes valuable time in order to check whether an htaccess file exists in every directory included in the requested path and parse it. On [...]

The new amateuristic release strategy of Firefox

I have been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix (version 0.5). I’ve witnessed all the effort that has been put into making this web browser a success. It is still the only web browser I can fully trust. Suddenly, earlier this year, the Mozilla Foundation decided to change the release strategy of the project [...]

WordPress is getting better

The first time I used WordPress back in September 2005 I considered it to be the content publishing platform of choice as far as a personal or business website was concerned. It was easy to set up and publish content and, also, easy to customize, even with ugly hacks.

How to configure mod_gnutls to use the RC4 cipher to mitigate the SSL/TLS vulnerability

It’s been a while since the details of an SSL/TLS vulnerability have been released to the public. Since then, security experts have worked on the issue and have released a whitepaper describing how to mitigate the attack, known as BEAST (Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS).

Mozilla Thunderbird speed up

Mozilla Thunderbird is of those pieces of software I could say I am a fan of, but since I upgraded from TB3 to TB5 and recently to TB6, I’ve been experiencing various problems with the application’s overall speed and responsiveness. Using Thunderbird almost felt as if it was reading its data from the internet. Working [...]

Why free should not always mean cost-free

More and more I realize that there is a misconception about free software. Many people tend to believe that free software actually means software that should not cost any money. They somehow find natural and fair the fact that some people may work voluntarily in order to produce software, which the rest can use to [...]