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With the launch of the Free Software Pact initiative the European Elections now have free software as an issue for candidates. The initiative will ask those standing for election to support free software in the UK. The Free Software Pact is a European project to bring the importance of the development of free software to the fore, especially as the European Parliament is where many discussions and decisions, regarding software patents, interoperability and net neutrality, are made.

Implementing Linux desktops is easier than IT staff expect, a new study concludes. You just need to pick the right users. A study commissioned by IBM and carried out by Freeform Dynamics found that Linux on the desktop was most easily achieved when first targeted at groups of non-technical users, such as those with moderate and predictable use of email and office tools.

Cisco is only the latest on the long list of companies that have been forced by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) to comply with the GPL. The Center uses copyright law to protect the freedoms guaranteed by the GPL. It's perhaps not surprising that makers of network-capable devices, from routers to set-top boxes, use Linux to drive them. There's all this useful open-source software lying around on the internet, ready for downloading, almost always accompanied by the source code – why reinvent the wheel and write, say, your own network operating system plus tools for a SOHO DSL router if, after all, Linux can do all that's needed and will run on virtually any hardware?

Juliet Kemp introduces us to TrueCrypt, an excellent, easy-to-use encryption tool for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Using TrueCrypt will instantly make you smarter than all the big government agencies and companies who compromise terabytes of data when their unencrypted laptops and backup media are stolen.

Keith Curtis, a programmer with Microsoft for 11 years, says proprietary software made Microsoft one of the most successful companies, but is a model destined to fail. Bill Gates probably will not sing the praises of Keith Curtis, a programmer with Microsoft for 11 years who's now left the fold and written a book about why the Redmond way will fail. Oh yeah, Curtis is not afraid to speak his mind as a Linux guru, either. The mantra Curtis repeats throughout his book After the Software Wars: proprietary software is holding us back as a society.

PHP is the most popular scripting language used on the Internet and is a necessary component to many of the blogs and content management systems today. One of the important steps in securing your website is to disable those insecure options that are possible on PHP.

If you follow Phoronix or the Linux gaming scene at all you will know the mess that has become to be known as Unreal Tournament 3. Last month when we asked Epic Games about the status of the Linux game client, they were not even sure.

Firewalls need to be simple and firewalls need to be complex….yes, this is a dilemma of huge consequence. However, Fedora has accomplished both in one firewall. This new option in System/Administration/Firewall provides two layers of set up for the firewall.

A $100 networked-attached storage (NAS) device using the Marvell SheevaPlug reference design has been updated to support Linux desktops. The Cloud Engines "Pogoplug" (pictured) has also gained 64-bit OS support, as well as easier searching and sharing software, says the company.

IBM commissioned market research company Freeform Dynamics to conduct a study on companies' use of Linux as a desktop system. Researchers interviewed 1,275 IT professionals from the UK, US and other countries, 90 per cent of whom use Linux on their company desktops.

One of the discussions your editor missed at the recent Linux Storage and Filesystem workshop covered the proposed reflink() system call. Fortunately, the filesystem developers have now filled in the relevant information with a detailed email exchange, complete with patches. We now have a proposed system call which has created more open questions than answers. The creation of a new core system call requires a lot of thought, so a close look at these questions would seem to be called for.

Mozilla Labs have launched Jetpack, a new way of creating extensions for browsers. Jetpack builds on HTML, JavaScript and CSS to provide the platform for add-on developers. By switching to web technologies for extensions, the Labs developers hope to make add-on creation accessible to a wider audience of developers. Jetpack Features, as they are called, can be installed and debugged without restarting the browser and can be debugged in the browser using Firebug. Another advantage of the switch to web technologies is that Jetpack Features should be portable to other Mozilla based applications, such as Fennec, Thunderbird and Songbird. It is also possible that other browser developers could add Jetpack compatibility to their browsers.

Change for the sake of change isn't desirable. If Linux is to break into commercial environments on a large scale, there has to be continuity and consistency. At the same time the desktop cannot afford to ossify, and the developers cannot be expected to ignore the potential that the technology offers.

Besides offering an impressive selection of USB flash drives and DDR2/DDR3 memory products, OCZ Technology has been quick to expand their selection of solid state drives. OCZ manufacturers SSD products in their value, mainstream, performance, and enterprise series with some of these series containing multiple product families. Earlier this year we provided Linux SSD benchmarks using an OCZ Core Series V2 SSD, but introduced just recently has been the OCZ Vertex SSD series, which we happen to be reviewing today. The OCZ Vertex SSDs go up to 256GB in size and offers 64MB of onboard cache, RAID support, and is rated for 1.5 million hours MTBF.

This tutorial shows how to harden PHP5 with Suhosin on a CentOS 5.3 server. From the Suhosin project page: "Suhosin is an advanced protection system for PHP installations that was designed to protect servers and users from known and unknown flaws in PHP applications and the PHP core. Suhosin comes in two independent parts, that can be used separately or in combination. The first part is a small patch against the PHP core, that implements a few low-level protections against bufferoverflows or format string vulnerabilities and the second part is a powerful PHP extension that implements all the other protections."

The OpenDocument Format (ODF) Alliance says that “serious deficiencies” in Microsoft’s support for ODF need to be addressed to ensure greater interoperability with other ODF-supporting software. ODF Alliance managing director Marino Marcich said in a press statement this week that “support for ODF represents an important and ongoing test of Microsoft’s commitment to real-world interoperability. Unfortunately, serious shortcomings have been identified in Microsoft’s support for ODF. Putting potentially millions of ODF files into circulation that are non-interoperable and incompatible with the ODF support provided by other vendors is a recipe for fragmentation.”

Microsoft's new entry-level server edition, Windows Server 2008 Foundation, is aimed squarely at Linux, and the software giant says its "simplicity" is expected to give it the edge over Linux as the choice server OS for the small business segment. By competing with Linux on a lower price point and touting Windows' familiar interface, Microsoft said it hopes to make both servers and its server OS an easy choice for small businesses looking to deploy a server. Each server, preloaded with the OS, will cost below S$1,500 (US$1,029).

Consultants working with CoreLabs have unearthed what they say are "multiple vulnerabilities" in the application which is a remote access element of Sun's Java Communications Suite. If leveraged, these could enable attackers to target users through exploiting cross-site scripting.

Instead of wandering in ignorance and getting frustrated, or bouncing randomly all over the Internet, 75-year old Emery Fletcher believes in learning from books, and becomes an accomplished Ubuntu user.

In a recent vote, the active majority of Wikipedia authors voted for dual licensing for Wikipedia content: In addition to the previous GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) used by articles and other media, a new "Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license" (CC-BY-SA) will also be used. The amendment will affect all Wikipedia content, as existing content is also to be re-licensed.