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So, as a little digression from our normal content, I felt like writing a list of the top 10 reasons to work on open-source software…but being a born Californian, I felt I had to pay a little respect to my roots. So here we have the top 10 reasons to work on open-source…as said by, like, a dude from Cali.

Back in August we shared some of what we are doing to drive new graphics benchmarks on Linux through the Phoronix Test Suite. With that, we showcased Lightsmark 2008, which was ported to Linux for integration with the Phoronix Test Suite, and Unigine Sanctuary. Unigine Sanctuary showcased the latest work from Unigine Corp, which is a Russian development studio focused on creating cross-platform middleware for virtual 3D worlds. The Unigine Sanctuary demo was stunning, but introduced with the Phoronix Test Suite 1.2 "Malvik" release last week was their latest technology benchmark. Unigine Tropics is an absolutely stunning test with impressive graphics capabilities and it really sets a new precedence for Linux graphics capabilities through its OpenGL renderer.

With KVM Virtualisation now under their banner, Red Hat is ready to take on the other company that owns virtualisation as well as operating system technology, Microsoft. Last week, for US$107 million, Red Hat acquired Qumranet, owners of the KVM Virtualisation product. The coupling of the Linux producer with virtualisation software positions Red Hat to move into the lead as a supplier of an enterprise level virtualisation solution.

"Speaking from China, Tux the penguin says "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" as the media continues to report that Lenovo is slaying the kernel mascot with the relish of a Canadians near a seal pup. iTWire digs a little deeper to reveal just WTF is really happening with Lenovo and Linux..."

I was a Windows user for several years when I decided to switch to Linux, late 2005 or early 2006, I can't recall exactly. I remember that on Windows I was always looking for freeware alternatives to all the paid applications. At the time, I was not aware of the terms 'open-source' or 'free software', and I definitely had no idea about the concepts behind them. On Windows I considered myself a 'power user', I knew my way around and could complete almost any task in Windows XP easily. I kept searching until I bumped into Linux and decided to give it a try.

Ubuntu 8.04 comes with Wine 0.9.59, which is already pretty old. In the meantime, the latest development version of Wine is 1.1.4, which was released on September 5, 2008. In order to compile Wine from source and install it on Ubuntu, you will only need to follow several easy steps I list below:

I got an e-mail this morning, tickling me to look into the idea that VMWare is violating the GPL. This idea has been around for some time and Big Money Matt has covered it beautifully. (Matt Asay’s writing is first-rate and his sources top-notch. If he ever decided to become a full-time reporter I’d hire him in a New York minute.)

How many of us leave our PCs running all day long, even when we’re not using them? Despite the fact that today’s desktop and laptop PCs and their OSes provide extensive power management functions, most PC users don’t bother to use them to shrink their systems' carbon footprints. Here are 10 easy ways to cut your PC's energy consumption.

Sometimes a consortium can play a smaller supportive role that is really powerful. Helping people and organizations to pull together in the same direction can accomplish amazing things. It’s very gratifying. The Linux Foundation, in concert with several well-known industry names (hint: they start with letters like I and G), has hired a key contributor to the Linux kernel development community, the system administrator for kernel.org. It’s an important position. kernel.org is crucial to the Linux kernel’s collaborative development environment. It is the actual physical space — in cyberspace — where kernel developers get their work done. Without it, nothing happens.

Where does the time go? It seems like just 6 or 7 days ago I was sitting in much the same place I'm sitting now, doing the exact same thing I'm doing right now. It's moments like these that make you realize that life is, indeed, fleeting. Speeding along at halcyon pace, savagely hurtling toward the finish line; before you know it, 59 or 60 minutes have gone by and you're once again faced with the stark realization that yet another hour of your life has passed you by. And the only real and true questions you can ask of yourself are "Did I LIVE those 50 minutes or so? Did I stop to smell the roses? Did I breathe in the intoxicating aroma of nature's bountiful harvest and reap the benefits which I’ve most surely sown? Or did I just spend a lot of time reminiscing about "a little while ago?" ;)

GNU is 25 years old this year, and every Linux user on the planet should take a few minutes to eat a piece of birthday cake and give thanks. Because it's more than just software.

Pardus has been around for quite a while, but never got much attention, perhaps because its developers focus on giving people from Turkey a distribution in their native language. But Pardus is a multi-language distribution, so it can be used by many people without a Turkish background. You can install Pardus in Catalan, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portugese and of course Turkish.

Michael Anti is an engineer and journalist whose work has appeared in theNew York Times, Huaxia Times, 21st Century World Herald, Washington Post, Southern Metropolis Daily andFar and Wide Journal. He has been a researcher, a columnist, a reporter, a war correspondent in Baghdad (in 2003) and more—and achieved notoriety in 2005 when Microsoft deleted his blog.

Songbird is a free opensource customizable media player and web browse powered by Mozilla. Songbird runs on Mozilla’s XULRunner platform, thus capable of running on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Solaris and Linux. On the Windows and Macintosh platforms, Songbird utilizes the VideoLAN Client for media playback. For Linux & Solaris, Songbird utilizes the GStreamer media framework instead of VideoLAN. The Qtrax client is based on Songbird.

KDE 4 is barely eight months old, and already it has three options for a main menu. Until now, users have either used the default Kickoff, which makes for awkward navigation of the menu tree, or reverted to the familiar but unwieldy classic menu. Now, with the first full release of Lancelot, users have another option that overcomes the shortcomings of both other alternatives and gives KDE 4 a thoroughly modern menu. According to comments on the project Web page by main developer Ivan ?uki?, Lancelot started life as a SuperKaramba applet for organizing desktop icons. Its name is a homage to Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- as evidenced by the default grail icon -- as well as a pun on "launch-a-lot."

I haven't been a big fan of the moves that Yahoo has made recently, but I like the sound of their latest move--opening up their online services and pages to third-party developers, as reported today by the Wall Street Journal. Reporting from a briefing held at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters, the Journal says that everything from Yahoo's home page to Yahoo Mail would become fair game for outside developers--a more open Yahoo. Here's how this may make a lot of sense.

Welcome back! Charlie Schluting, in this edition of Networking 101, will give you the IP knowledge required to understand routing issues. Most everything on the Internet uses IP, and unlike Ethernet, knowing this protocol is pivotal to understanding how networking works with regards to the big picture. In upcoming articles, Networking 101 will explore TCP and UDP, routing theories, and then delve into the specific routing protocols. It's going to be a wild ride.

Boxee is a new entrant into the increasingly crowded open source media center space. The company's eponymous application is billed as a "social media center" -- melding a smorgasbord of social networking services into an XBMC-based media center designed for the couch-centric user. Boxee has bigger goals in mind, but you can take an early look at it now by applying for the invitation-only testing program.

Windows may be king of data centers, but Linux has a foothold in nearly every courtyard and is sure to make further inroads in the year ahead. According to the Data Center Decisions 2008 Purchasing Intentions Survey, 91% of data centers run Microsoft Windows, but a large percentage also use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (48%) or Novell SUSE (21%, multiple versions) in their data centers. Nonetheless, Linux use remains limited in scope, with two-thirds of respondents running Linux on 25% or less of their servers, with application servers the most common pairing. Tech Target

One of the greatest and most destructive beliefs in the open source community is that "Because I'm not a programmer, I can't participate in an open source project." Let me be the first to tell you that if you believe that, you're wrong. Dead wrong. Why? Well let me explain.