Hello readers, and welcome once again to Free Software Magazine’s fortnightly newsletter, keeping you up to date with all things free software! Enjoy!

General announcements

Free Software Daily is absolutely powering along! Subscribers, submissions, voting and comments are all on the rise. It's amazing to see how far we have come in less than two months. We are already finding that FSDaily has all the news that other leading sites do and more. With your help we can make it the best free software news hub on the net. For those who have already joined. Thank you! And for those that haven't: please come along and help us by subscribing, submitting, voting and commenting. There is something there for everyone. See you there!

Latest content

The LUG is dead - Long live the soulless marketing corporate junket—Steve Goodwin ponders the demise of the LUG, and the junket that has appeared in it’s place. read more...

A beginner’s introduction to the GNU/Linux command line, Part II—Managing processes—Rosalyn Hunter’s massively popular tutorial for novices that discusses processes and process related commands including ps, top, grep, fuser, more, jobs and kill. read more...

Microsoft the copyright infringer—David Sugar dives into the Microsoft/GPLV3/Novell discussion! read more...

How to build squid authentication helpers—Edmundo Carmona teaches you to build your own authentication helper using the language of your choice. read more...

How to close down GNU/Linux safely after a system freeze with the SysRq key—Gary Richmond provides a great howto for when your system freezes. read more...

Firewall Builder—Marco Marongiu runs through the easy way to configure a firewall with the GUI Firewall Builder. read more...

Writing screen and stage plays with Celtx—Dreamed of writing a screenplay? Anthony Taylor introduces the program that can help you make it happen. read more...

Making Gnash: a well-deserved name?—Mitch Meyran checks out Gnash, the Free Software Foundation’s alternative Adobe Flash player. read more...

Using VirtualBox to run Ubuntu and any other operating system—Andrew Min shares the easy way to run operating systems without messing up your system. read more...

Latest book reviews released

Qmail Quickstarter by Kyle Wheeler Alan Berg finds out how to install, set up, and run your own email server. read more...

Practical Packet Analysis: Using Wireshark to Solve Real-World Network Problems by Chris Sanders Brian Turner explores Wireshark. read more...

Book competition announcement for this fortnight

This week we are giving away a copy of Qmail Quickstarter by Kyle Wheeler and a copy of Practical Packet Analysis: Using Wireshark to Solve Real-World Network Problems by Chris Sanders.

All you need to do to enter is check out the latest book competition announcement on our blogs page.

GOOD LUCK!

Thanks go to No Starch Press and Packt for providing these fantastic prizes.

Winner of the book competition from last fortnight

Thanks to all those who entered, unfortunately there can only be one winner...

Congratulations Michael Fötsch of Seiersberg in Austria!

Michael has won copies of The Definitive Guide to SQLite and Pro Open Source Mail: Building an Enterprise Mail Solution.

Thanks to all who entered.

Thanks also go to Apress for providing these great prizes.

Please comment wherever possible and don’t forget to log in so that you’ll be in the running to win the latest book competition

Poll Results—What’s your favorite news hub for free software news?

Aw. Thanks guys. It turns out that 57% of you have nominated FSDaily as your favourite news hub! The distant second after FSD’s fabulous lead was 11% nominating Lxer, then 9% for Slashdot, followed by Tux Machines, OS News, and other on 6%, and then Linux Today and Linux Weekly News last on 3%. So maybe there was a bit of sucking up, but we’d prefer to think that FSDaily is the best all the same... Read more here and stay tuned for...

This fortnight’s poll

How do you feel about the GPLv3?

There’s been a lot of controversy over the recent release of the GPLv3. But what do you think? Do you think it’s exactly what the free software movement needs? Do you think it has some problems? Or do you think it is not required and that the GPLv2 was fine without the changes? Please let us know your thoughts on the matter and give us a comment if you have anything further to add.

Reminders

Comments

Your comments on articles, issues, and blog entries are very welcome. They provide other readers with insightful suggestions, further information, and the feeling that they are not alone. They also provide our authors with the feeling that they are being heard. Please comment wherever possible and don’t forget to log in so that you’ll be in the running to win the latest book competition.

Avatars

Avatars are a great way of expressing your personal identity, whether it be a photo or an image that you feel represents the you you want to be. Read more about avatars here. To add an avatar: log in, go to “my account” in the menu on the left, go to the “edit” tab and scroll down to where it says “Upload picture”. Now, hit the browse button, find the image on your computer that you want to upload and go to the bottom of the page and hit the submit button. That’s it; you now have an avatar image.

Invite a friend

Share Free Software Magazine with your friends! We have a really strong community and we want it to grow and grow, and with your help, it can! When you are logged in to Free Software Magazine, you should have a feature called “Invite Your Friends” showing on the left hand side in your navigation menu. If you click on this feature, you will be taken to a page where you can insert your friends’ email addresses and a personal message, and they will receive an invitation from you! You can also keep track of which of your friends have accepted your invitations. Go on, spread the free software word today!

Subscriptions

Ever wanted to follow that story, or blogger, or be informed when a change appears to some content that you want to keep up with? Now you can. Using our new “Subscribe” feature, you can receive an email update every time a blog or page is updated or when a comment is added, so you can keep up with all the latest changes. You can manage your subscriptions by logging in and going here.

Donate

As you might know already FSM is a low profit project with all funds raised going back into producing the fine magazine you can read for free.

Think about how much you would normally have to spend buying a magazine of this quality. We provide it for free!

Your donations will help us to continue spreading the word about free software and producing more fantastic issues.

Contacting us

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Thanks

Thank you for subscribing to Free Software Magazine. You are a part of a growing community who help to raise the awareness of, and educate new users in, the joys of free software. Without you we would not have this community and without you we would not have a magazine. Happy reading!

FSM Newsletter 16th July 2007