AMD released their first X86 based 64 bit processor over 3 years ago. While the original processors, Opterons, were for servers, the desktop variants, Athlon 64, soon followed. Due to the open nature of the Linux kernel, distributions of Linux supporting the 64 bit architecture were readily (and freely) available before Windows. In the past year, the Athlon 64 has made its way into laptops and more users are finding 64 bit versions of their favorite Linux distributions satisfactory for their needs.

SpamAssassin is a free tool for mailservers to identify SPAM. It has a several parameters it checks (forged headers, HTML only content, blacklisted hosts, improper mail relays, etc) and assigns a score for every parameter. If the total score is greater than the threshold, it is marked as spam and either tagged, moved to a separate mailbox or deleted. I started using SpamAssassin in April of 2005 and it has caught thousands of messages.

After using shared hosting services on Linux servers for the past few years, I was thinking about experimenting with a VPS (virtual private servers). Currently shared hosting services are highly competitive. If you shop around you can find great deals to host a simple website most with a comprehensive feature set. However these are all very limited. My basis for a VPS was to acquire a server that had room to grow but yet more manageable and more affordable than a dedicated server.

About 2 years ago I purchased a Linux based PDA: the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. The PDA was intended to be used on Windows and (later) Linux. The initial driver for Windows setup the device as a USB network device, however the latest driver set it up as a normal USB PDA. I found that using the older driver, I can assign an IP address to the device and configure it as a mini server.

Since Redhat stopped supporting their commercially available Linux distribution, they moved to an Enterprise Linux Server (RHEL) and left everyone else to use a community effort (Fedora Core). Considering the cost of RHEL, the source packages were recompiled and redistributed. The resulting CentOS is a free binary compatible distribution of RHEL without the proprietary Redhat only software. I have seen some virtual private servers using CentOS for the virtualized operating system.