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In order to provide a better service to the existing openSUSE Community and to our new users, we’re pleased to announce that suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de and the openSUSE support forums at forums.novell.com (the three largest English speaking dedicated SUSE forums) are joining forces to merge into the new official openSUSE Forums at forums.opensuse.org.

The Australian survey, Open Source census 2007, funded by IBM and Fujitsu, was conducted by Open Source strategic consulting firm Waugh Partners under the guidance of NICTA (National ICT Australia). The survey sample included 327 individuals working on Australian Open Source projects in Australia and abroad, as well as 129 companies providing Open Source services. The Open Source census 2007 is claimed to be the first national research project to study companies and contributors involved in the Australian Open Source industry.

Simon, I'm beginning to think that you were right and I was wrong. You said a standard's process is a crucial aspect of the standard's product, and a process that is not open cannot be trusted to produce a product that can be considered open. I maintained that I had seen and used many wonderful standards that took absolutely zero input from me, and therefore I didn't see my participation as a necessary prerequisite for assuring quality in the future. I believed that no matter what the process, a standard should be judged by the product. Watching the fallout settle from the BRM in Geneva, I'm beginning to think that you were right and I was wrong.

Does GNOME co-founder Miguel de Icaza's backflip over the Novell-Microsoft deal a few days ago mean that he has finally been convinced that he is on a one-way path to nowhere? Has he realised that his own project, Mono, is actually putting GNOME on a development track that can leave it open to patent claims one day? And has he realised that creating Moonlight, a clone of Microsoft's Silverlight, (with which the company hopes to trump Adobe's Flash) is not going to advance the cause of free software one iota?

GUI calculators may be user-friendly, but they don't offer much comfort for a command-line power user. Fortunately, console-based tools such as bc, Genius, and Calc offer distinct advantages over their GUI counterparts.

Much information already exists concerning methods for deploying networks and hardware using thinclients. However, in this excerpt from David Richard's book, we shall try to clarify those essential differences between using a network with personal computers and thin clients. Certain network designs prove to be very stable and provide the best possible solution...

Computers that run the Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows didn't attract enough attention from Wal-Mart customers, and the chain has stopped selling them in stores, a spokeswoman said Monday. "This really wasn't what our customers were looking for," said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien. To test demand for systems with the open-source operating system, Wal-Mart stocked the $199 "Green gPC," made by Everex of Taiwan, in about 600 stores starting late in October.

Desktop Linux systems have been available from vendors both small -- such as NorhTec -- and large -- such as Dell -- for some time now. But, until recently, users who feel more comfortable buying from a retailer have had few choices other than some low-end systems from Wal-Mart. Things are changing.

Dual-booting operating systems can be very convenient, but with it brings the troubles of trying to keep data synchronized between the operating systems. Sure, in most cases Linux can read/write to partitions, but something even more convenient than that is a partition that both operating systems use for userdata. This guide overviews the procedure on how to set this up between Mac OS X and Linux.

I decided to start from scratch with my Debian server project. Last time I was too hasty in adding the open-source version of Movable Type to my installation and intermingling files before I was ready. This time I'm going to be a lot more methodical and make sure that Apache and MySQL are working properly -- meaning I can run CGI scripts and have a directory dedicated to same -- before I start with Movable Type. I could've removed Apache, done some cleanup and gone from there, but since I didn't have much "invested" in the install, I wiped the drive and started over.

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 4 has been released for testing. The fourth beta of the next major Firefox version offers over 900 bug fixes over Beta 3, including improvements in download manager, full page zoom, better integration with Vista, Mac OS X and Linux, and significant improvements in speed and memory usage.

After stocking the gPC in stores for a few months, Wal-Mart has announced they will no longer be stocking any Linux-based computers in their stores, but they never even tried the Eee PC.

PCLinuxOS Magazine, March 2008 (Issue 19) is available to download. You can find it at the new PCLinuxOS Magazine website. If you'd like to be informed immediately about our releases, please signup for the Magazine-Announce mailing list .

One of the things I always enjoy when creating presentations, letters, videos, graphics and other documents is playing with different fonts. Fonts can change a boring text-only presentation or paper into an exciting, stylish, wild or classic experience. Yes, it is very easy to get carried away, but that is part of the fun -- trying to achieve the perfect balance between form and function.

The proper use of source control systems is a critical skill for programmers to have, and something that many of them have to pick up through observation, trial, and error in the workplace. For students, or people who primarily program as a hobby, the learning process can be particularly slow and painful. Here are some examples and discussion on the best practices you can use to avoid common source control pitfalls.

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, device-mapper-multipath is installed by default. This is a change from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. If a third party multipathing solution is in use, device-mapper-multipath should be disabled to avoid any conflict between multiple multipathing technologies.

Thai systems integrator Norhtec is preparing to release a sub-$300 ultra-mini PC (UMPC) laptop based on a Quanta design. Aimed at the developing-country market, the so-called Gecko Laptop is being built by Quanta and runs Linpus Linux Lite, a new distribution designed for small-screen mini-PCs.

South Africa’s nTier has completed a migration of the Water Research Commission’s Compiere ERP system from Oracle to the PostgreSQL-based EnterpriseDB. The commission made the move from the Oracle database to EnterpriseDB because the EnterpriseDB relational database was a more affordable option, nTier said in a statement today.

Programming the Asterisk open source PBX via the Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI) is a fun but exasperating exercise for the telephony programmer. It is fun since it can make a telephone dance, but frustrating because errors and debugging information can be difficult to catch since status information arrives on multiple channels: audible, Asterisk console, and STDERR. You can make the process of debugging a bit easier with the assistance of PHPAGI and Festival.

And it came to pass. Asus saw the EeePC and it was good; it’s even better with a 9-inch display. Asus has officially named the 9-inch EeePC the EeePC 900 and has released some detailed specs about the low-cost laptop. The EeePC 900 will be available with either Windows XP or Xandros Linux. Instead of using flash memory, Asus will be using SSD (solid state drives) for storage this time. The Windows XP equipped model will ship with an 8GB drive with the Linux models having either 12GB or 20GB capacities.