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SAN FRANCISCO -- Linspire launched Freespire ahead of schedule Tuesday, hoping to eliminate the complexities of Linux with a simple software suite designed to do the tasks users want.

X11R7.1 (also known as X.org 7.1) was released back in May. It contains a number of useful new features, better 3D performance on a number of video adapters, and tons of fixes. It is, in general, the platform that X users probably want to be using. This release is not as widely used as it could be, however, and the associated story illustrates one of the costs of proprietary modules.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 from Novell was named “Best of Show” at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco this week. In addition, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop was named “Best Desktop Solution,” and Novell AppArmor earned “Best Security Solution” honours. Part of the Linux Journal Product Excellence Awards, the awards distinguish product and service innovations at LinuxWorld.

Does the sudden appearance of a FireFox crop circle imply which browser extraterrestrials prefer? We don't know, but it was still fun to make!

Novell is making the claim that Linux as a desktop OS is now mature enough for the requirements of power users such as senior executives and engineers, and is urging enterprises to adopt the OS on their workstations.

Colin reported a vulnerability in the Linux Kernel, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to cause a DoS (Denial of Service).

OpenVZ Project Releases Software for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Plus Additional Capabilities

The release of Firefox 2.0 has been delayed until 24 October, with a Beta 2 release scheduled for 23 August, according to Mozilla. The entire release schedule was shifted to deal with last-minute fixes.

We are proud to announce the first Beta release of the long awaited Comodo Trustix Secure Linux 3.0.5.

"There is no product on the planet that has ever gone from first-shipment to the heart of the data center in one go," said XenSource CTO Simon Crosby. "This fuss about enterprise readiness is a storm in a teacup, and mostly about the Linux vendors positioning against each other. Xen is in its earliest days of product shipment, and the standard model for getting software into production in the enterprise will apply."

Hewlett-Packard has announced that it will be the first major server manufacturer that will offer support for a non-commercial community-based OS. The company has made a general announcement that it plans to begin supporting the Debian Linux distribution for customers around the world by the end of this financial year.

Now that we know more about Mac OS X Leopard, the battle lines are clearly being drawn between Apple's offering and the one that's sitting in Redmond somewhere.

[Interesting perspective in the ever-running debate on MS vs Apple. GNU/Linux is mentioned only incidentally - dcparris]

Alternative licensing advocacy group Creative Commons is using Pootle, a SA-led web-based software translation tool, to translate its software into local languages.

Grassroots and NGO computer training organisation CECS is running two one-day training courses on Open WorkBench, a free and open source software project management application.<br />

ZABBIX monitoring System installation with screenshots

Learning OOoBasic can be a bit like learning a foreign language. If you have the time and ambition to communicate fluently, you can spend months or even years studying grammar and expanding your vocabulary. But sometimes you just need some basic skills to get you through daily situations. In this case, a crash course that introduces you to some basic principles and building blocks of the language would do just fine. The same is true for OOoBasic -- if you need to write a simple macro that makes your daily computing life a bit easier, you don't have to spend time reading about methods, routines, and object properties.

Mobile phone developers are scrambling to ensure that the openness of the Linux operating system doesn't irate regulators. Consumers who run Linux on a PC are used to having full control over the operating system, but shouldn't expect that same level of control on a Linux powered mobile phone, cautioned Mike Kelley, senior vice president Engineering with Palmsource. The company is in the process of developing a Linux version for mobile phones to replace its current Palm OS.

Xandros will offer do-it-yourself free installs of the new Home Edition of its desktop Linux operating system on Aug. 17, the final day of the LinuxWorld Installfest sponsored by Open Country, Inc., providers of the OCM Universal Systems Management Suite.

Online IT job clearinghouse Dice Inc. has some interesting statistics to accompany LinuxWorld. As of August 1, there were 7,000 jobs opportunities on Dice.com for technology professionals with Linux experience. This is up 35.6 percent from the beginning of the year and 55 percent higher than 12 months ago, the service reports.

Sun Microsystems took another step toward its promised open-source Java this week, launching a portal site to talk with the Java community about the process of setting Java free.