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R2integrated (R2i) is a Microsoft shop that has discovered how well open source software and communities can build a solid business. Principal Chris Chodnicki says it was a customer request that turned the technology consultancy toward DotNetNuke (DNN), an open source Web application framework. R2i began using and contributing to DNN about a year ago after Snyder's of Hanover asked the company to consider using DNN to build Snyder's corporate intranet. Since then, "We went from this little five-man company to 50 employees, all due to the alignment with this open source product."

"This may count as one of the biggest -rc releases ever. It's humongous. Usually the compressed -rc1 diffs are in the 3-5MB range, with occasional smaller ones, and the occasional ones that top 6M, but this one is *eleven* megs," Linus Torvalds announced the first release candidate of the upcoming 2.6.24 kernel. He summarized some of the changes, "in short, we just had an unusually large amount of not just x86 merges, but also tons of new drivers (wireless networking stands out, but is by no means the only thing - we've got dvb, regular wired network, mmc etc all joining in), and a fair amount or architecture stuff, filesystems, networking etc too."

Contributed by Alexander Todorov Splitting big files into pieces is a common task. Another common task is to create a tar archive, and split it into smaller chunks that can be burned onto CD/DVD. The straightforward approach is to create the archive and then use ’split.’ To do this, you will need more free space on your disk. In fact, you’ll need space twice the size of the created archive. To avoid this limitation, split the archive as it is being created.

The South African government yesterday announced the adoption of OpenDocument Format (ODF) as a standard for government communications.

Within the past couple of weeks two Linux distributions came out with new releases, featuring the K Desktop Environment. On October 9th, Mandriva Linux 2008 released their latest version to the masses. KDE 3.5.7 and Compiz Fusion 0.5.2 are just a couple of the updates with this latest release. Head on over and take a Mandriva Linux 2008 Tour. On October 18th, Kubuntu 7.10 was released, marking its 6th major release. Kubuntu includes the last KDE 3.5.8, making it the first distribution to release the 8th maintenance update to the KDE 3.5 branch. There were many other updates in this latest release as well. Mandriva is the first distribution to include QtJambi, while Kubuntu adds Qyoto C# bindings.

The nominees for the second annual South African E-Commerce Awards have been announced. All are now invited to vote for their favourite sites until November 23.

X/OS Linux is a distribution built from Red Hat Enterprise Linux sources. Its developers claim it was created "to provide a hassle-free enterprise-class Linux operating system without usage terms tied to commercial services." I downloaded it expecting I might find all the refinement of Red Hat along with some improvements and the community one expects to find growing around free software. It seems I set my expectations too high.

As part of our KDE and Distributions series (1, 2, 3, 4) KDE Dot News spoke to representatives from Alt Linux. Russia recently announced plans to include GNU/Linux in every school in the country, and ALT Linux hopes to be the chosen distribution. Below CEO Alexey Smirnov and Andrey Cherepanov answer our questions about their relationship with KDE.

Knowledgetree, the Cape Town-based open source document management software provider has released KnowledgeTree Open Source Edition 3.5, licensed under the new GNU General Public License version 3.

Are you geek enough for Linux? Though it first earned a reputation as a platform for hobbyists and hackers, Linux has come a long way since Linus Torvalds cobbled together the first kernel as a student project. A modern Linux desktop is a sophisticated, user-friendly GUI environment, with features and applications to rival any proprietary OS. In fact, when compared to the mainstream alternatives, there are lots of compelling reasons to give Linux a try.

Europe’s agreement on patents predates the Turobolinux announcement Having watched how Microsoft included patents in its deal with then EU (more on this in the next post), it is worth pointing out that the US won’t extend antitrust sanctions, despite rising opposition and the recent decision in Europe.

Hasannudin Saidin, director of the government programmes from IBM Malaysia has written a very good article about open standards, and why they are important. I pointed to and thanked him for his article - and asked him for a job.

GeoGebra, a GPL-licensed teaching and learning tool that integrates geometry, algebra, and calculus, benefits both teachers and students alike. Developed by Markus Hohenwarter at Florida Atlantic University, GeoGebra constructs geometrical figures and demonstrates the relationship between geometry and algebra. GeoGebra can help you create interactive demonstrations and precise images of geometric figures for inclusion in teaching and testing materials.

Adoption of OSI-approved GPL v3 License Strengthens Open Source Community Participation In Leading Open Source Document Management Project

A recent bug report for Ubuntu Linux has confirmed that both the Feisty and Gutsy versions of Ubuntu cause some unnecessary wear and tear on a hard drive. The bug report reads: “I run feisty (beta) on a Dell Inspiron 9400 with a Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 hard drive. After booting, the drive's power management settings are such that it spins down A LOT. At this rate the drive will be dead after 2.5 years, and I don't even use this computer for more than a couple of hours each day.” Definitely an interesting sounding find. But what exactly does it mean? That's what I thought when I read it, so I did a little research. Feel free to comment and correct me if I've gotten anything wrong.

We've been covering the development of GIMP 2.4.0 for a number of months, and GIMP 2.4.0 is finally available! GIMP 2.4.0 is so new that their website hasn't been updated yet, but if you check out the GIMP FTP it is available for download as of October 23. We have some screenshots from an earlier GIMP 2.4 testing build.

Open-source tools are finding their way into the stack, but few support mission-critical functions. Database administrators increasingly find open-source technologies in Oracle data centers.

-Levanta today announced that it has closed an $8 million funding round to help further accelerate its move into Linux data center automation. “Due to escalating management costs, enterprises are not able to truly reap the cost benefits of Linux on commodity hardware,” said Ed Ekstrom, ex-founder of LANDesk and current managing director at vSpring Capital. “Levanta, with its deep domain expertise and focus on Linux, is uniquely positioned to address this problem. We are pleased to see that Levanta’s products continue to deliver significant ROI to its customers.”

Nokia's recent announcement of the upcoming N810 Internet Tablet is very exciting news for mobile Linux enthusiasts. We have already covered the initial announcement, but this followup discusses some additional details about the N810 operating system and development platform that have been revealed by Nokia's Maemo team.

Red Hat today announced that three leading Italian organizations, including CSI-Piemonte, one of the top fifteen software and services companies in Italy, Iride Energia, a leading thermal and electric energy provider in Italy and the City of Marsala have found success with Red Hat solutions. Each has experienced heightened performance, cost-savings and increased reliability with solutions including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat Support.