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Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format specification is fatally flawed where it comes to spreadsheets, with many functions filled with careless errors, according to Rob Weir, a systems architect for IBM and a member of various ODF technical committees. Weir documented seven specific problems in a blog post, and said there are others.

MEPIS on July 9 announced the "Spartacus" release of antiX, a community-built, ultralight derivative of the MEPIS Linux distribution. AntiX (pronounced "Antics") is the personal project of MEPIS community member "anticapitalista," who engineered it as a free version of MEPIS aimed at old 32-bit PC hardware. AntiX is built using the MEPIS Linux 6.5 core, but mostly it has a different set of default user applications.

Dell Ubuntu Linux buyers were recently outraged when a price comparison between identical Inspiron 1420 laptops showed that instead of the Ubuntu system being cheaper, it actually ended up costing $225 more than the same laptop with Vista Home Basic Edition. "Bottom line this was an oversight, pure and simple," a Dell spokesperson told DesktopLinux.com. The prices have been reset to the appropriate prices.

Since January of this year we have been telling you that AMD has been silently working on R600 (Radeon HD 2000) support for their proprietary Linux "fglrx" driver. However, for the end-user the support isn't complete and still equates to being useless. But how does the recently announced Avivo R500 driver function with the newer R600 series? We have tried out an RV610 GPU in several configurations under Linux, and in this article we will tell you what works and what doesn't right now for the Radeon HD 2000 series.

Lenovo seems to have a love/hate relationship with Linux. Last year, it began offering its high-end T60p ThinkPad laptop with SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop). This year, the company is releasing its newest high-end laptop, the T61p ThinkPad, and once more, while it runs desktop Linux, the company isn't overly eager to let the world know about it.

LXer Feature: 12-Jul-2007

A look inside what makes KDE tick, a glimpse of what the future holds and more in The LXer Interview of Sebastian Kügler.

Prepare for your Linux certification or build fundamental skills on Linux systems administration. In this sixth installment from a series of nine tutorials on exam 102 topics, you will know how to manage users and groups, set user profiles and environments, use log files, schedule jobs, back up your data, and maintain the system time.

The next release of the Linux kernel will apparently gain an all-new scheduler said to deliver better desktop scheduling. Ingo Molnar's CFS ("completely fair scheduler") implements a fair scheduling approach long advocated by Con "Conman" Kolivas. Molnar, a Red Hat employee who maintains the kernel's scheduling subsystem, describes CFS as follows: "Eighty percent of CFS's design can be summed up in a single sentence: CFS basically models an 'ideal, precise multi-tasking CPU' on real hardware."

IBM today announced that it is granting universal and perpetual access to certain intellectual property that might be necessary to implement more than 150 standards designed to make software interoperable. IBM's commitment not only applies to the distributors, developers or manufacturers that are implementing the specifications involved, but also extends to their users or customers. It is valid as long as adopters are not suing any party -- not just IBM -- over necessary patented technology needed to implement the standards.

"I'm a bit of a rebel," Benjamin Mako Hill says,"with rather too many causes." Best known for his many roles in Debian, Hill is also a member of the Ubuntu Community Council, an advisor to One Laptop Per Child, a director of Software Freedom International, and the originator of several free software projects -- to say nothing of an active voice for the Free Culture Movement, and the occasional organizer of such activities as last fall's iPod Liberation Event in Cambridge, Mass. Hill recently took on his largest challenge yet as the youngest director on the Free Software Foundation's board of directors.

Another move in the software patent game. IBM is offering a patent covenant to implementers of a bunch of IT standards, with the catch being that you lose all of the covenant protection if you sue over any patent that reads on any software that's also covered by the covenant.

Another thread discussed potentially merging the swap prefetch patch into the mainline Linux kernel. Con Kolivas started the thread saying "I fixed all bugs I could find and improved it as much as I could last kernel cycle. Put me and the users out of our misery and merge it now or delete it forever please." Replying to an off-list message, Andrew Morton asked users of the patch, "please provide us more details on your usage and testing of that code. Amount of memory, workload, observed results, etc?"

Five years after the debut of its popular open-source drawing program for children, New Breed Software announced the release of Tux Paint 0.9.17.

Amazon uses Linux. eBay uses Windows. But what OSs and webservers run Web 2.0? We tested 17 of our favorites and found out. The script is included to check for yourself. They all use Linux. Linux is pretty much it for Web 2.0 startups. If you’ve ever wondered why a site called VentureCake has so much Linux content, you now have your answer.

IBM announced today that they are simplifying access to their patent portfolio as it applies to open standards. "IBM's commitment not only applies to the distributors, developers or manufacturers that are implementing the specifications involved, but also extends to their users or customers. It is valid as long as adopters are not suing any party -- not just IBM -- over necessary patented technology needed to implement the standards."

The general corporate strategy of standardising the platform and hiring accordingly is an echo of that argument from the 70s. Organizations standardising on Red Hat Enterprise Server generally try, for example, to hire people with Red Hat Enterprise Server experience and then press the combination as the one size fits all solution for whatever Linux needs line managers may have. Take a close look, however, at the Linux staffing issue and you should see notice that the average tenure generally exceeds the average life of a distribution -meaning that when you hire Joe, he’s likely to be around longer than the particular Linux distribution you hire him to run.

Novell Inc. on June 18 released its first service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. This service pack, also known as SP1, features significant enhancements in virtualization, high-performance computing, security, interoperability, and system management. LinuxQuestions.org has a nice collection of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop SP1 screenshots.

After a long wait, the first official Stable version of Elive, 1.0, has finally been released! This version is ready for the end-users and not just hard core testers. It is a more intuitive easy to use and more efficient system. It has better integration of the file-manager and the mime-types, a nice kernel especially for multimedia and big processes loads, a light weight foot print, much better compatibility with your (possible) Windows system/software, more hardware supported, better graphical recognition, and many more things.. LinuxQuestions.org has a nice collection of Elive Gem 1.0 SP1 screenshots.

Not too long ago, I subscribed to a Linux magazine for beginners called Tux. Fantastic magazine, but the last I heard they were "headed out," so to speak, due largely to a lack of funding. However, unlike bigger publishers, which include Linux Magazine, Tux was special because they were giving away the magazine in the PDF format. That's right, they provided a free copy of their magazine in hopes of generating enough revenue in ad sales alone. Unfortunately, it did not work out so well for them to that degree. This got me thinking, though - could it be that their advertising model was flawed?

The Meraka Institute and Linux Holdings will be co-hosting Linix Professional Institute exams on August 11. The exam will take place at the Linux Holdings premises in Pretoria. Linux Holdings recently launched South Africa's first full-time Linux academy. Candidates from all levels are welcome to attend.