LINUX MAGAZINESLINUX MAGAZINES: Open Source News, Articles and Reviews

When it comes to security, versatility and stability, there is no better solution in information technology than open source. From operating systems to Web development to just about any common application, the open-source revolution finally has taken hold.

Businesses have started to truly understand the benefits of opting for open source, not only to save money, but also for the peace of mind it brings to their IT environment.

The term “open source” has a variety of meanings in the IT world. It is used to describe initiatives and collaborations ranging from software projects to enterprise environments with source code that is accessible to anyone. It stands as perhaps the ultimate example of the process of continuous improvement by encouraging everyone to make it better – and share how they did it.

Many open-source-based solutions like RedHat, Ubuntu and Suse are becoming down-right mainstream, drawing offers for proprietary partnerships from hardware giants like Dell, HP and IBM. So far, each has maintained its autonomy and reiterated its commitment to furthering “the movement” rather than its bottom line.

The issue of support no longer keeps businesses from buying in to open-source technology either. Most are fully supported, either through packages by their distributors, as in the case of RedHat and Suse, or via the well-rounded Internet network.

Open-source now is possible – and pragmatic – for every new Web development project. By using LAMP – that’s Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP – an open-source solution can be created that is versatile and secure.

Author: Aaron Wittersheim
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Latest trends in mobile phone

 Aghreni offers skill enhancement courses in 

· PErL, PHP, Ruby & java/J2ee

· Unix/linux

· Mysql

· Web development

· User interface design

·  Veritas

· Usability engineering

· Project management

· Leadership

· Software development techniques

· Software testing techniques

In India  the web development Companies focus generally on software development, Information Technology Consultancy, Web design and development, Offshore Outsourcing, Business process outsourcing, Knowledge process outsourcing, Enterprise Resource Planning Development and Implementation, Multimedia and custom software applications.Expansion in global business has lead to a volume increase in the services requirement. Marketing challenges of the export houses need effective inventory management with quality. Software development companies in India possess expertise in the development of inventory based application and ERP solutions to implement the same for cost reduction, quality increase and profitability.Retail Industry today needs support in retaining customers and also in ensuring customers to repeat their business by staying competitive. Indian Software development companies have proven expertise and experience in development of transaction based web application and e-commerce sites and client server applications.Manufacturing sector and services sector is a major hub in the global business arena. Production Planning, automation of order to cash and procure to pay cycles play a significant role in global competitiveness and focused quality service. Software development companies in India excel in services offered in the areas of application development and Enterprise Resource Planning, development and Implementation.Wireless mobility and automation systems need handling of security issues with user friendly interface and faster access through latest technology adaptation. To stay in tune with the latest demand in product development, Indian Software development companies provide design and development of Embedded Systems, wireless product and application development for blue tooth, IRDA etc.Software development companies in India work as extended arms as offshore units to leading organizations to provide 24 X 7 development and support activities, cost effective resource management and flexible skilled manpower availability.Many Indian IT companies extend outsourcing services with core expertise in Business to business, Business to customer, Banking, Finance, Real Estate domains and verticals like Insurance, Oil & gas, GIS etc.Software development companies in India possess in depth core expertise in application development in .NET, Microsoft Technologies, Java based development, SAP, Oracle ERP and CRM solutions and various latest cutting edge technologies under different operating systems and platforms with options of multiple back end and database technologies. Development services are also offered in web application designing and redesigning, PHP, AJAX development, Ruby on Rails, content management solutions through Joomla and Drupal.Thus it seems that Indian software developing companies had blocked disclosing their transaction wins especially behind the reaction rise a several years before against outsourcing.

As we started the project of the electronic auction PoloMercantil.com, we knew that the proprietary software costs would be too high for our financial resources. Our only option then was to make use of Open Source Code softwares.

However, within the Open Source Code there are lots of softwares to choose from, and it´s up to the system analyst/programmer to pick the ones that best suit the project goals.

In our case, we picked Linux as our operating system. However we faced a big question: Which Linux distribution ? There are dozens of linux distributions, each one with specific advantages, sometimes with or without paid services.

We chose linux Slackware because we thought that it would suit better our needs, in terms of stability and reliability. Slackware is a conservative distribution, meaning that it only offers in its distribution package kernel versions and third party libraries, once it´s been proved to be stable and reliable. As a result, Slackware is one the most stable Linux operating system on the market. If the user wishes the most recent Linux kernel and libraries, we recommend to look for a different distribution.

Another reason for us picking Slackware, was because of its text interface, which at the beginning may become a bit difficult, in the long run however it offers a better understanding of the Linux environment. This way most of Slackware configurations are done thru text scripts.

Once it was set the operating system, we picked Apache as our web server. Apache is one of the most popular web server in the internet. For server programming language, we chose PHP. Also, a very popular programming language. Our experience with Apache/PHP proves that this setup is very reliable, working extremely well in our production environment. For workstation programming language, we chose javascript, which besides of having a simple syntax, it offers lots of resources.

Apache web server is really a complete web server. Also, it can become very complex with many configuration setups.

For our database, we picked Postgresql. This database has been made available to the public for more than 15 years, and besides of being well debugged, it offers so many resources that it has become one of the best database options from Open Source Code softwares. Extremely reliable, Postgresql has reported cases where there have been databases in production with over 4 terabytes. Besides all of that, Postresql is not the most popular Open Source Code database. A matter of marketing ? Probably.

As for the programming language PHP, we had to use an object oriented application structure. There are many PHP application structures being offered with Open Source Code license. Object oriented application is very important, because it makes programming very easy and scalable up to the point where the system may grow without many problems. Also, it helps to keep PHP code separated from HTML, with the help of some specific libraries, such as Smarty. We make use of Smarty library and we believe that it is a very important resource, which can even make web pages faster thru the use of its cache functions.

Also a very important set of libraries worth mentioning for PHP systems, is the PEAR libraries. In PEAR web site, among the many libraries being offered, there are the database interface DB and the MAIL_QUEUE, which sends emails thru the use of database.

As we came to the end of the project PoloMercantil, we had to use some sort of real time database replication. For that we chose the DRBD and Heartbeat libraries. The use of database replication is very important and should not be postponed. Just after 3 months our system got into production, our server hard disk became bad. Thru the use of DRBD/Heartbeat we were able to put the system back into production within seconds, without loosing any data. DRBD/Heartbeat replication is done thru the use of a lan network between the server and slave nodes.

Our project also makes use of ImageMagick (enlarge and reduce images), Iptables (firewall), Tsearch2(text search in portgresql) and Mon (linux monitoring tasks).

Also a very important library worth mentioning is the pseudo APC compiler for PHP. Speed is always a critical factor for internet sites.

PoloMercantil is already in production and based upon our experience we can say that the Open Source Code softwares we picked, proved to be extremely reliable and stable. Open Source Code softwares can certainly be an excellent option for developing web sites.

Roberto Sedycias

IT Consultant for PoloMercantil

This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article & biography must be kept.

If you are planning to setup your own personal website and wish to get a quick online presence, you need to decide a reliable web host and a hosting environment. Usually, web hosting companies offers two different choices with every package – Linux and Windows Hosting. You need to choose a platform that better fit to your requirements.There are certain things which need to be consider while choosing a hosting platform. If you ask me, in terms of security which platform is the best? I would recommend you to go with a linux based hosting package.When a web hosting provider offers you a Linux-Unix based hosting, it generally means that your site will be hosted on a linux-unix operating system platform. This operating system makes it much compatible with the system that you may be using on your own computer.Linux and Unix are not a different platforms, they are the same. There was time when linux operating system was used only by the professsionals, but now developers have implemented many things to make it simple and user-friendly, so that a new user is also able to understand and operate the programs quite easily. Because of the Shell structure a well experienced person will have much benefit and control over their website.In reliablility, Linux is known as one of the most reliable operating system, as the system itself don’t have any bugs and hence, secures your website. Most of the linux based hosting providers prefer cPanel as their web hosting control panel which has Friendly User Interface.Due to its capacity of handling multiple processes at the same time, you can expect more output from your server. Preferring linux as your operating system you can have an advantage of scripting languages such as C, C+, Perl, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Servlet/JSP Tomcat and many more!MySQL is the database to which linux support. Before going with any web hosting provider just make sure they provide a full database support for MySQL.As the linux operating system is being improved by many specialists around the globe, most of its versions are free of cost. Due to this condition, the linux based hosting has become much cheaper and reliable than any other hosting.There are many linux based web hosting packages available in the web hosting industry that offers great features, fast and secure servers such as Personal Hosting Package, which is an ideal solution for setting up a personal websites.

Vim and EmacsVim and Emacs are not dedicated development tools, but still, they offer a fair number of features for editing HTML and, in fact, any language you may use for web development. They both support syntax highlighting (HTML, PHP, Python, Perl, CSS and many others) and offer support for editing files on remote machines. Both programs are very versatile and can be extensively customized because they support numerous scripts and extensions to extend their functionality. However, both programs are complex tools and present a very steep learning curve.

OOo Writer/Web (OpenOffice.org web)It’s possible to write a simple web page without knowing any HTML at all using the Open Office own web creation tool. This would be a very basic page indeed, because it does not support CSS or forms, for example. I would not recommend using this tool for a complete web site because the code it produces is sometimes unnecessarily complicated so it could present a nightmare in the future to edit and transform a large project which was initially created with Open Office web. But for a quick page, why not ?

SeaMonkey Composer (ex Netscape Composer, ex Mozilla composer)The Open Source SeaMonkey Composer is based on the venerable Netscape composer, so it’s now incorporated into the SeaMonkey suite. It is a fairly simple WYSIWYG editor which generates clean code – unlike many commercial WYSIWYG editors. Unfortunately, it’s not very powerful and it only partially supports CSS. SeaMonkey Composer is a suitable tool for complete web design beginners who want to create a very basic website.

KompozerAvailable on Linux, Mac and Windows, Kompozer is based on the Mozilla composer so it shares a relatively similar interface. However, it is a much more advanced tool now, while trying to maintain a non-scary approach for new-comers in web design. The documentation is good and the community active, so, if you have questions or problems, help is not far away! While SeaMonkey Composer lacks many features in WYSIWYG mode, with Kompozer you can almost create a complete website staying in pure WYSIWYG mode. Still, if you want to add some code manually, it’s possible to jump in a second between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML, using tabs. The preview mode uses the gecko engine (Mozilla, Firefox) to render web pages. While the code is clean, it will still be necessary to test your web pages against less-compliant web browsers, such as Internet Explorer 6, for example. It’s got an easy-to-use, built-in FTP client to quickly upload files to your webspace. Support for forms, tables, and templates is very good but CSS support isn’t perfect and it doesn’t currently support server-side language like PHP. In conclusion, for the moment, Kompozer rests somewhere between tools like Frontpage (Kompozer produces better code) and Dreamweaver (yes, this is huge gap !): it is a good web development tool, aimed at beginners or intermediate users but it will need more refinement and support for server-side language if it wants to approach the very best web editors available on Windows, for example.

Quanta PlusQuanta Plus is a user-friendly HTML editor and web development tool designed primarly for the K Desktop Environment (although it can run on almost any environment). Unlike Bluefish, Quanta is capable of both WYSIWYG designing and handcoding. It supports a huge number of languages, and its syntax checking and highlighting are excellent. It has code folding and current line highlighting. Features also included are: templates, document structure management, project management, plug-in support, DTD support,etc, integrated FTP client and preview function to let you see the results of your work while you’re working. There is also a commercial variant called Quanta Gold, available on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, with more features. For Gnome users, the KDE interface of Quanta Plus will look a bit out of place, but overall that’s quite minor (note : this is not the case with Quanta Gold, because it’s based on QT). Quanta Plus is free; Quanta Gold costs US $39.95 (download) and $49.95 (cd set).

Screem Screem is an open source web development environment written for use with the GNOME desktop environment (it can also be used on other windows managers, however). Screem supports Dreamweaver templates and offers a number of wizards to help with the addition of multimedia content. It does not provide a WYSIWYG display of pages and it’s more aimed at advanced users.

BluefishBluefish is a powerful and lightweight open-source editor targeted towards programmers and web designers, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Browser integration is good and it’s got very good support for HTML, CSS, XML, PHP, Pearl, C, JavaScript and even … Pascal or Octave/MATLAB ! As the developers say on their web page, it’s “a what you see is what you need” interface, so it’s not a tool suitable for complete beginners in web design (and it was never meant to be !) and there is no graphical preview (but you can quickly access/launch external browsers by clicking on the relevant icon). One important feature missing is FTP integration. Otherwise, it is by far my favorite editor !AmayaAmaya is the W3C’s -the international consortium which helps develop standards for the World Wide Web – browser and web editor. Although it’s theoretically a WYSIWYG package, the interface is rather confusing and not very well designed. Finally, this program can be relatively unstable.DreamweaverThere is no native version of Dreamweaver on Linux, on which it is officially not supported. However, Dreamweaver MX and Dreamweaver 8 run well using Wine or Cross-over office. Dreamweaver is the now ultra-dominant web design package available on Windows and Mac OS : it’s often excellent and very expensive.

Linux hosting is an alternative to using Microsoft Windows-based technology for operating a website. Linux is an open-source operating system, which means the code that makes it run is publicly available. This means computer experts all over the world can share ways of improving how the system works. Although it is more complicated to understand than Windows, most computer experts say Linux is much more reliable and less likely to ‘crash’. This makes it particularly useful for running websites.
Linux hosting makes use of several technologies:
* PHP is a programming language which produces dynamic web pages. These are pages which can change in appearance and content in response to something the person viewing it does (such as filling in a form). PHP is a server-side language, meaning the program runs on the server (the computer that physically stores the website) rather than the computer being used to view the page.
* MySQL is a database system used for websites. It can be used for features such as a real estate company letting site visitors search for properties of a certain size and cost. It is used by popular sites such as Craigslist and LiveJournal.
* Python is a programming language which is well-regarded among many programmers. It is relatively sophisticated, but is easier to understand than many programming languages. Python often uses common English words where other languages simply use symbols. Python also gives programmers the ability to make a draft alteration to a program and check the effects immediately without having to make the change permanent.
* XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a more flexible method of organizing the information that makes up a website. With the old HTML system, each piece of information is labeled only for appearance (for example ‘bold’ or ‘italic’). With XML, any type of label can be used. For example, in a page containing a recipe, a piece of text could be labeled as ‘ingredient’ or ‘safety warning’. XML means that a website owner has much more control over the information on their site.

Congratulations, you have bought that extremely expensive software which has every function available except the kitchen sink loaded up on it. After using this for some time, you want a little bit of minor changes in the function as well as the manipulation of this open-source software. It is also possible that you are going to look at the changes in the perl or php script. What are you going to do then, look around the Internet for another ready access the software which has a way to change the PHP scripts or look for a company which can change your software to fit your Windows or Linux needs? Computer savvy people are going for the second option which is not only economical, much is time-saving and can also help in creating custom-made open source software. Open source Linux software and open source Windows software is all very good for downloading and buying, but what happens when you find that you need to modify it. You want a function taken away. You want another function added. You don’t really like the size of the buttons and want their design, functions as well as style changed. You come to us. The services which we offer you is everything from the modification of the software so that you can use it