The main problem with "social networking" isn't just that your "social" life has corporate boundaries. It's that your personal choices do too.

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This week's "Linux Product Insider" features Trolltech's Qt 4.4, Matthew MacDonald's Your Brain: The Missing Manual, the Embedded Linux Track at LinuxWorld, AdRem's NetCrunch 5, MindTouch's Deki Wiki v8.05 and REAL Software's REALbasic 2008 Release 2

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If you're having trouble getting Linux to run on that 8-bit processor with 32KB of memory don't despair, there are open-source alternatives. FreeRTOS is an open source real time kernel that has been ported to a number of microprocessors. The website lists ports to over 40 different processor/compiler combinations.

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I'm looking to compare how much money is made with Linux, vs. how much is made because of it. While I know it'll be hard to find the former and impossible to determine the latter, I think comparing the two will still be revealing.

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Linux Journal Gadget Guy, Shawn Powers, takes us through installing Ubuntu on a machine running Windows with the Wubi installer.

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The comments on the single distro story got me thinking about what I want/need/use. I have been using Linux since before Bill Gates heard of it and my uses, needs and interests have changed over time.

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One of the items on the Geek Ranch agenda is a weather station. While we don't have one yet, we have learned a bit about weather stations and Linux.

First, why don't we have one? Well, there is no electricity at the Geek Ranch site yet for starters. But, more important, there is no Internet connection. So, let's just call this research.

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Linux Journal Products Editor, James Gray, spoke with Jim Lacey, Linux Professional Institute's President and CEO, about Linux certification today and its outlook for the future.

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When I demonstrate software for Linux Journal, I tend to use Ubuntu as my operating system. The reason is simply because Ubuntu is extremely popular, but it begs the question, should the Linux community standardize on a single distribution? Let's look at some of the pros and cons:

Advantages of a Single Linux Distro

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BONUS: Video interview with Benjamin Mako Hill, and bragging rights if you can identify the birds twittering in the background...

A couple weeks back, I headed down to Penguicon 6.0. It's a Linux convention, but also a Science Fiction convention. Really, it's like a geeky version of, "Hey your chocolate is in my peanut butter."

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This week's "Linux Product Insider" features SkyWayUSA's Rural Hi-speed Internet, Apress' MINDSTORMS NXT book, Curl Nitro, Open-Source Java and Linux, SugarCRM 5.1 Beta and Plat'Home's OpenMicroServer.

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Have you ever uncovered Linux hidden in a place you didn't expect or have you implemented it covertly? Here are some interesting stories from readers.

This submission comes from Andy in Vermont, USA:

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It turns out that hard infrastructure is softer than the name suggests. This is good, since I want to make the case that both LInux and the Net are forms of infrastructure no less legitimate than water, electricity, roads, sewers and waste collection.

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This month's Harvard Business Review features a case study of a company debating whether to open source its software. Here's a mini review of the article.

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If you like the latest and greatest version of everything and you use an RPM based system you probably want to learn how to create RPMs. You don't have to, you can just download the latest source and compile and install it in /usr/local. This of course leaves your system in a state where your RPM database does not accurately reflect what is installed on your system. Again, this will work, but building RPMs isn't (usually at least) that difficult.

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Does it matter who pays the salaries of Linux kernel developers? If so, how much, and in what ways?

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There are two kinds of Linux people in the world, those that will help people fix their Windows spyware problems, and those that will not. I land squarely in the former camp, and I think that it's important for us all to consider doing the same.

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This tip shows how to add logging to your PHP script and how to add configuration so you have basic, configurable logging. The PHP script requires two PEAR packages, Log and Config. To use the code in shown in this tip, you'll need to PEAR installed along with PHP and you'll need to install both the Log and the Config PEAR packages. To install the two packages type:

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Ola Bini has written a couple of posts that touch on Rubinius and the other Ruby implementations. The first talks about the new weekly meeting of implementors, saying “[I]t’s a huge deal.

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