This post originated as an email to the LLUG (http://lincs.lug.org.uk) mailing list but I thought I’d stick it here too.)
I use Ubuntu on my desktop and powerpc laptop and I used Debian on web servers. As well as The Linux Documentation Project (http://tldp.org/) I’ve found a couple of web sites with a wealth of information specific to these distributions that you may or may not have heard of.
The Unofficial Ubuntu 4.10 Starter Guide
http://www.ubuntuguide.org/
This web site details how to achieve many of the most common tasks required of a Desktop PC in Ubuntu Linux and also covers topics relevant to running a server. I’ve constantly referred to this site since I’ve started using Ubuntu.
A Debian Grimoire
http://deb.riseup.net/
I’ve only come across this one very recently but it looks great. It covers setting up a lot of the main services a Debian GNU/Linux server commonly offers including a Web Server, Mail Server, List Server Databases and Backup. I’m not sure how up to date it is and it doesn’t seem to indicate which release of Debian it most applies to. I’m assuming Woody, can anyone tell me otherwise?
New Releases
The next couple of months are going to be a very interesting time. The next six monthly release of Ubuntu codenamed Hoary Hedghog is due very soon, as is the transition of Debian Sarge to stable (finally). I believe the next version of Open Office is not too far away and slightly off topic, Apple will be releasing OS X Tiger.
Here’s a list of things in Free Software I’m currently very interested in.
Horde (http://horde.org)
Application framework written in PHP which runs webmail and a million other things on a web server. I’m also interested in running a mail server and OpenLDAP.
Moodle (http://moodle.org/)
This one’s for work, “a course management system (CMS) – a software package designed to help educators create quality online courses.”
Easy Moblog (http://easymoblog.org/)
I’m looking to run my own weblog software for various reasons including LiveJournal (http://livejournal.com) being bought out by Six Apart. Easy Moblog looks very interesting but I’m currently looking into authentication methods when updating a web log via email.
PHPiCalendar (http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpicalendar/)
I’ve been doing a lot of PHP coding around this application for a while. It’s basically an online iCalendar (rfc2445) parser which parses a calendar file published from a compatible calendar application (like Apple iCal and Mozilla Sunbird (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html)) and displays it on a web page. I’ve been hacking it (in conjunction with magpierss http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/) into an events based content management system updateable by a non-technical user via WebDAV (http://www.webdav.org/). The web site is due to launch after Easter so I’ll post the link then. I’ve also recently been interested in converting XML to SQL to create a table in a database from an XML file.