The big news today is no doubt Novell’s acquisition of Ximian, Inc . So it was that much more interesting to get the chance to speak to Ximian’s lead primate, Miguel de Icaza , today and ask him some questions …

Here you will find some great apps and tools that will generally improve your experience on your preferred Linux desktop, though it is geared to the Ubuntu user (that’s my current distro) any of the below is available for all distros

By the time you read this, Christmas will be over. Thanks to the staggered posting system we have here, this joke is post-dated. Despite that, however, we here would like to have wished you and yours a Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays.

poker-engine is a Python library that implements
poker rules according to variants and betting
structures specified in configuration files. It is
designed to be used by a multiplayer poker server,
a poker AI, or a poker client.

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License: GNU General Public License v3

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Changes:
Bugfixes.

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poker-network includes a poker server, a client
library, an abstract user interface library, and a
client based on it. The server deals the cards and
checks the user actions using a poker game engine
(poker-engine). It listens on a TCP/IP port and
understands its own specific protocol. The
persistent information is stored in a MySQL
database. The client library implements the
poker-network protocol for the client. The
abstract user interface library provides a
framework based on the client library and suited
to implement a user friendly client.

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License: Affero General Public License

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Changes:
Bugfixes.

poker-eval is a C library to evaluate poker hands. The result
of the evaluation for a given hand is a number. The general
idea is that if the evalution of your hand is lower than the
evaluation of the hand of your opponent, you lose. Many
poker variants are supported (Draw, Holdem, Omaha, etc.)
and more can be added. It is designed for speed so that it
can be used within poker simulation software using either
exhaustive exploration or Monte Carlo.

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License: GNU General Public License v3

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Changes:
Bugfixes.

fsarchiver is a system tool that allows you to
save the contents of a filesystem to a compressed
archive file. The filesystem can be restored on a
partition that has a different size, and it can
be restored on a different filesystem. Unlike
tar/dar, fsarchiver also creates the filesystem
when it extracts the data to partitions.
Everything is checksummed in the archive in order
to protect the data. If the archive is corrupt,
you just lose the current file, not the whole
archive.

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License: GNU General Public License v2

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Changes:
Support for multi-threading compression (option -j on the command line) and the ability to restore a corrupt archive.

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Anki is an intelligent, spaced-repetition flash
card program designed to maximize your memory
potential and minimize the time spent studying. It
has special features useful when studying
Japanese, but can be used to study anything.

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License: GNU General Public License v3

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Changes:
Many new features and bugfixes have been added since the last release.

pam_mount is a Pluggable Authentication Module that can mount volumes for a user session upon login, using the same passwords as for login. It supports any filesystem your kernel is capable of, including FUSE, SMB/CIFS, various crypto types, and more.

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License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

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Changes:
This release closed a leaking fd, resynchronized DTD with the XML configuration file, and optionally makes the DTD available for installation. A number of compilation errors on BSD have been fixed.

Circumference is an implementation of a WebAuth
client and server to supplement the
recently-written specification for the WebAuth
Diameter Application, complete with an extensible
Diameter server and base library. Diameter is
specified in RFC3588 and its updates.

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License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

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Changes:
The TLS handshake procedure was changed to the new RFC3588bis15 specification.