Xenu Link Sleuth is a Windows only program which is very useful for web developers. The application checks for all the links in a website, and reports the broken links, or links which provide errors. By looking at the proprieties of each broken link its possible to see which pages link to that broken link and what is the word that links to it.
Xenu can also generate HTML reports for each website check, the reports are customizable.
Despite its cheap appearance, Xenu is a very professional and stable application.

The program is written in Visual C++ and compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio. Old versions of Xenu featured a TDI interface which allowes the checking of multiple websites.
Xenu is a multi threadded application which default allows 30 parallel threads, however through the preferences menu its possible to increase this to a maximum of 100 threads. This is however not raccomanded on systems with limited resources.

The name
The program is named after Xenu, the Galactic Ruler from Scientology scripture, which are fantasy stories of the XX century.

The developer
Xenu Link Sleuth was written by Tilman Hausherr who is well known in the Usenet community for his activism against the lies of the Scientology. Tilman is a German citizen whom lives in the capital of Germany, Berlin.

Xenu is very small in size, stable and easy to use, if you are a web-developer, my suggestion is don’t wait more and visit the download page to get your FREEWARE copy of it: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

History
Lazarus was started in February of 1999. It was primarily founded by three individuals:

• Cliff Baeseman
• Shane Miller
• Michael A. Hess

All three had attempted to get involved with the Megido project which dissolved. In frustration they started the Lazarus project. It has had a steady growth of supporters and developers during the following years. Of the three founders, only Michael A. Hess is still involved with the project.
The next oldest member of the team is Marc Weustink. He got   involved with the project in Aug. 1999. Following him is Mattias Gaertner who got involved in Sept. 2000. Both of them have been the major contributors to the core of what makes Lazarus tick. More about the history in the Wiki

So just what is Lazarus?
Lazarus is the class libraries for Free Pascal that emulate Delphi. Free Pascal is a GPL’ed compiler that runs on Linux, Win32, OS/2, 68K and more. Free Pascal is designed to be able to understand and compile Delphi syntax, which is of course OOP. Lazarus is the part of the missing puzzle that will allow you to develop Delphi like programs in all of the above platforms. Unlike Java which strives to be a write once run anywhere, Lazarus and Free Pascal strives for write once compile anywhere. Since the exact same compiler is available on all of the above platforms it means you don’t need to do any recoding to produce identical products for different platforms.

Yeah, but what about the GUI? What widget set are you using?
That is the neat part. You decide. Lazarus is being developed to be totally and completely API independent. Once you write your code you just link it against the API widget set of your choice. If you want to use GTK+, great! If you want it to be Gnome compliant, great! As long as the interface code for the widget set you want to use is available you can link to it. If it isn’t available, well you can write it.

For example. Let’s say you are creating a product on Windows using the standard Windows widgets. Now you want to create a Linux version. First you decide what widget set you want to use. Let’s assume you want to use gtk+. So you copy the code over to your Linux development machine, compile, and link against the gtk+ interface unit. That’s it. You’ve now just created a Linux version of the Windows product without any additional coding.

At this point in the development we are using Win32, gtk+, Carbon and QT as our API widget set. As soon as Lazarus reaches a 1.0 release developers will be able to start to create the interface unit to tie the LCL (Lazarus Component Libraries) to other widget sets.

So is this thing really RAD like Delphi?
It sure is. Is it totally completed? No not yet.The over all IDE is complete and can be used for most programming needs. Several aspects
of the project are still in need of help. Hint. Hint.

Can I use my existing Delphi code?
Some of it yes. If the code is standard Delphi pascal and it uses the standard components found in Delphi then the answer is yes. If it uses some specific database, OCX, or DCU then the answer would be no. These items are specific to Windows and would only work on and within Windows. However, if you are only looking to create a Windows product using Free Pascal and Lazarus then the answer would be yes. This hasn’t been added to the LCL yet but it should be possible in the future.

Can I create commercial products with this?
Yes. The code for the Free Pascal compiler is licensed under the GPL. This means that it is open source, free, whatever name you want to stick to it. You can modify the code if you wish but you MUST distribute those changes or make them available to others if they wish to use it.

The FCL (Free Pascal Component Libraries) and the LCL (which will eventually become part of the FCL) are licensed under a modified LGPL. In a nut shell this means that you can write your own proprietary software that just links to these libraries. You can sell your application without the need to supply or make available your code. However, as with the compiler if you make modifications to the FCL or LCL you must make those changes available to the general public and the world.

I give up, where did the name come from?
One of the original projects that made an attempt to build a Delphi clone was Megido. However this effort died. Lazarus as you know was the biblical figure that was raised from the dead by Christ. Soooooo. The project is named Lazarus as it was started/raised from the death of Megido.

Original article can be found here: http://lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/page,7.html

The first time I had heard about Linux was around the year 2000, in my mind Linux was something like a UNIX shell, just a black screen and typing. I never searched deeper, while I started my IT studies there where two classmates who where using Linux. One was using Slax, a derivated of Slackware, he was using Fluxbox (due to less money he still had an old computer), the other one was using Ubuntu. I once got an Ubuntu Live cd and tried it out (i think it was around version 5), it was the year 2006, I liked some things, but disliked other. However I had my first live cd and could avoid all the security of my school, I could finally browse the internet anonimosuly at school without anyone spying me. Later on I wanted to be able to write on NTFS partitions through Linux, so I started to try out Slax, it was much nicer than Ubuntu, but still something was missing. One of my class mates gave me 5 cd’s of SuSE 9, that afternoon I was excited, I went home, formated my PC and started installing Linux, no Live CD’s, just Linux Installed, it took long, very long, but everything was installed. After SuSE i tried other distributions, I tried Kubuntu, but didn’t like it, I tried Sam (an old remaster of PClinuxOS XFCE), I tried Puppy Linux, Damm Small Linux, openSuSE, other sitro’s (which I don’t remember the name) with Compiz, XFCE, LXDE, and so on. I also tried PClinuxOS and Mandriva. I entered the Linux world. In this period I learned very much about Linux and how different it is from Windows.
For a long period I used PClinuxOS 2007 with KDE as my main operating system, but many programs I needed where not working and KDE seemed slow on my AMD 3000+ single processor, so I switched back to Windows. After around a year, I had a very nice virus on my USB, which infected all my school and also my home PC. After cleaning everything at home, I though I got rid of the virus, but the virus had burned itself on one of my CD-RW during the infection period and it came back. Stop, I decided to go back to Linux, again PClinuOS 2007 was on my PC.
Since all the distributions I have tried PClinuxOS has always been the simplest in everything, so I decided PClinuxOS would become my first Linux distribution. PClinuxOS has worked on all the hardware I have tried untill now, hardware where Ubuntu (the all supporting hardware ??) failed.
One of the greatest functionality of PCLOS is it backup tool, mklivecd (now renamed mylivecd) which allowes you to do magic. You can install your operating system (PClinuxOS), install all the software you need, run this tool and you will have a brand new installation CD of your operating system and all your applications, your themes and your wallpaper, even your data is there; and all this can work from a LiveCD again, or be installed on whatever other machine.

Here some screenshots of PClinuxOS with the Redmond style.

FEATURES
PClinuxOS comes in different editions featuring differen Window Managers and different Desktop Environment, the DE used by PClinuxOS are: KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE, Enlightment, Zen Desktop.
The system requirements of this system mostly depend on the Window Manager, but require less resources than Windows 7. This Distribution should work on every modern PC that is not older than 5-6 years.

INSTALLATION
PClinuxOS is one of those distro’s that require you to boot from LiveCD before you can install them, this is easly done, just place the cd in the drive, reboot the machine and wait until the login screen appears. Username and password are show in the login screen (root root, guest guest).
After you login, just double click the “Install PClinuxOS” icon on the desktop and follow the instructions (just click Next several times and the game is done).

SOFTWARE
PClinuxOS comes with a veriety of software already installed, theoretically all the necessary programs you need when using a normal office pc. Other software can be found in the repository which will install all the necessary dependencies for you. You cannot find your software into the repository? No problem, just do a Package Suggestion in the forum and if its a usefull software somebody will package it for you.
To install OpenOffice just click on the link provided in the Menu, and follow the instructions, in no time you have a high professional office suite installed.

At the end the hardware requirements of each distribution depend much on its components (Desktop Envorinment, Window Manager,…) which are in many distro’s the same, what makes PClinuxOS different from the rest is that PClinuxOS is “Radically Simple”. I have not found anyother distribution which is simpler.
Now, go on http://pclinuxos.com and download your new operating system: PClinuxOS.

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Here we will post useful stuff, reviews, things the Redmond XP team is testing, trying, experimenting, and so on…Any feedback is always appreciated.