OSSPACK

Eschalon is a turn-based RPG (role-playing game), which tries to reproduce the feeling of classic RPG games. It's closed-source, available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, and it comes with a demo too. The full version is available as a download for $19.95.

Linux Journal speculates that future Android devices may run Mozilla's mobile Firefox, Fennec. "Android or not, Fennec development is moving forward. Two new builds were released on Friday: a second beta for the Maemo platform, and a second alpha for Windows Mobile. Developers report that the browser's user interface has been heavily improved, and gains have been made in both performance and responsiveness. Changes to the add-on system and download manager have also been incorporated. Windows, Mac, and Linux desktop builds are also available."

An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has published Linux filesystem benchmarks comparing XFS, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs and NILFS2 filesystems. This is the first time that the new EXT4 and Btrfs and NILFS2 filesystems have been directly compared when it comes to their disk performance though the results may surprise. For the most part, EXT4 came out on top."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

No matter if you're pushing, slicing, fading, hooking, pulling, or drawing, this driver will have your shot fixed in no time. The Nike SQ Dymo STR8-FIT Driver ($300), available in...

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More funny Linux posters. It wasn't just a clever title ;) Also switching to posting 3 or 4 times a week. One a day for almost a year and a half has been fun, but is becoming impossible... just ask my kids ;)

One of the neater things you can do with the versatile utility lsof is use it to recover a file you've just accidentally deleted.

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Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio Linux community continues its forward march and is gaining momentum every year. Each year brings a new group of speakers and generates more excitement—2009 will be no exception! The seventh annual Ohio LinuxFest will be on September 25-26, 2009 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, in downtown Columbus, Ohio.

The platform that has defined "cool" for years has not had a reputation for being an open platform, but that hasn't discouraged a number of open source projects for iPhone/iPod Touch.

This tutorial shows how to combine four single storage servers (running Debian Lenny) to a distributed replicated storage with GlusterFS. Nodes 1 and 2 (replication1) as well as 3 and 4 (replication2) will mirror each other, and replication1 and replication2 will be combined to one larger storage server (distribution). Basically, this is RAID10 over network. If you lose one server from replication1 and one from replication2, the distributed volume continues to work. The client system (Debian Lenny as well) will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86-64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

Greywater is the term for all household wastewater except for the toilet and kitchen sink. This is the only comprehensive book I know of on the subject, and in this fifth and expanded edition, Art Ludwig explains how to choose, build, and use a variety of simple greywater systems. There are clear drawings for sending washing machine water into the garden (with or without a drum), for putting diversion valves on bathtubs or showers, for creating “mulch basins,” for ultra-simple setups like “Garden Hose Through the Bathroom,” and “Dishpan Dump (Bucketing)” -- the latter of which I've been practicing lately to the great benefit of both septic system and compost piles.

There’s a large section on branched drains -- splitting the flow and dispersing greywater to a number of mulch basins in the garden -- using gravity flow, no pumps or electricity. Mistakes made in greywater systems over the years are documented here, along with suggested improvements, and there's a two-page System Selection Chart with a comparison of 18 different systems.

-- Lloyd Kahn

[Complete plans for one of the book’s most broadly appealing projects -- a Laundry to Landscape Grey Water System -- are available, free, on the Oasis Design site. -- ES]

The New Create an Oasis with Greywater
Art Ludwig
2009, 144 pages
$21

Published by and available from Oasis Design

Or $15 from Amazon

Sample Excerpts:

Simple Laundry Drum with Rainwater Harvesting

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Figure 7.6: Laundry Drumless Laundry

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Related Entries:
The Tiny Book of Tiny Houses Ratcheting Tube and Pipe Cutter Create an Oasis with Greywater