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As server Linux vendor Novell eyed the enterprise desktop market at Cebit this week, Xandros, better known for its desktop Linux OS, plotted its move to enterprise servers.

Number two telecom OS provider Enea will release its direct, asynchronous message-passing software for distributed systems under an open source license in June. Described as the "cornerstone" of Enea's telecom RTOSes, the "Linx" IPC (inter-process communications) software scales better than other freely available IPC technologies, such as TIPC (transparent IPC) and Unix sockets, Enea claims.

Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. "I've tried about 100 different distros over the past two years and can honestly say I've never seen anything as spectacular as Kororaa Xgl," mused one excited user in an online forum. Yes, Kororaa, a little-known Gentoo-based distribution, stole the spotlight last week after the release of a live CD featuring Novell's amazing Xgl technology; we asked one of the distribution's developers to tell us more about the project. In other news, Fedora and Ubuntu delay releases, CeBIT visitors share KNOPPIX 5.0 torrents, a project builds a live DVD that boots several Linux distributions, and two articles teach the basics of Solaris. Also in this issue: a special report that looks at the growing acceptance of Linux in schools. Happy reading! Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch

The reporter writes, "The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) announced the opening of its operations in India. It is expanding the availability of its certifications for individuals and organizations in India are growing technology industry."

Once sued by Microsoft for giving exact answer to the Microsoft tests which some people claim were obtained by people taking tests and reading the answers into small recording devices, the seem like pawns of Redmond.

My problem with these guys? They lobbied against the Open Source Bill in Texas. Are they shills for Microsoft? No verification of that, but they sure looked like it at the committee hearing in Austin.

The European Commission has published its Decision defining the role of the Trustee in the Microsoft case, the curriculum vitae of the Monitoring Trustee, as well as the curricula vitae of his advisors. The Trustee Decision is the formal document which sets the parameters for the Trustee’s work in monitoring Microsoft’s compliance with the March 2004 Decision (see IP/04/382) in order to advise the Commission on that compliance. These documents can be found at:

BlackBerry has just announced that they are offering Google Talk among their mobile devices for BlackBerry users with a Gmail account. Blackberry is offering their users a PDF download file called Google Talk for BlackBerry devices User Guide and has a list of systems requirements at the BlackBerry.com (NSFFF - Not Safe For FireFox) site.

  

We discussed the need for a simple yet understandable DNS Howto. So, we worked together and came up with what we think every Linux person should know about the largest distributed database on the planet.

According to Till Brehm one of the sponsors of HowtoForge.com: I'm sure it will help many people to get started with DNS. When I have a look at our Forums, DNS is one of the most discussed problems.

Novell would do well to change some old conventions to match Debian. They would expand their support channels to pickup a massive user base and become the preferred Linux vendor in both distributions and services. They could also provide SUSE with more application options for their users.

Whether you’re a newbie to Linux or you are a seasoned guru, you’re bound to find some scripts or programs which just make your life on the computer exponentially easier. The following is a list of them and explains what they do.

Midland Memorial Hospital in Texas hopes to have the bulk of its electronic health record (EHR) system up and running on open-source software by late spring or early summer, says David Whiles, the hospital's IS director.

Operating across three campuses 8km from each other and linked by high-speed networks, Midland Memorial is a 371-bed hospital run as a single organisation. It is also on track to fully implement Medsphere Systems' OpenVista software and services.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes.."I don't think the standalone office suite, no matter whether it's from Corel, Microsoft, Sun, or OpenOffice.org is in danger of disappearing soon. I do, however, think that Writely plus GDrive is going to be a major step forward in freeing users from having to rely on any particular operating system." [Ed: Like I've said before, another program I will not need to keep on my computer. - sharkscott]

As consumers we've become an impatient lot. We live in a world where "on-demand" is a part of our everyday lexicon. Whether it's our travel, our meals, or our money, we just want it now. This is the case with our television as well. Enter the hottest new product offering to be marketed by video service providers: Video-on-Demand (VOD.)

Ubuntu.com reports - Significant changes affecting the installer and live CD include: A much improved version of Espresso, the live CD based installer is included. A new default theme has been included. A range of ATI cards which were previously unsupported are now supported. New development version of GNOME is included.

Once again OSDir takes the latest Ubuntu Flight for a ride in their Ubuntu Linux 6.04 Alpha 5 Screenshot Tour. You don't want to miss this one!

Odd, mainstream press review primarily about Thunderbird vs. Outlook, where the former does quite nicely in most instances. However, the underlying thrust is still that Mozilla's Thunderbird has many option that reviewer sees as missing.

[ED: Interesting just because where it was published. Moreover, what seems like a view point based upon some study and real knowledge. Nonetheless, I am not in full agreement, still nice to see both Firefox and Thunderbird discussed with both respect and candor. - HC]

The open source movement gathered even more momentum in Australia this week with Novell becoming the latest Linux supplier to gain approval to sell products and services to the NSW Government.

The trend towards open source software will give government offices access to an alternative desktop system which may see many abandon Microsoft's Windows for the cheaper Linux platform.

OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 has been announced. Among other new features, fixes, and improvements, this version contains the KDE Addressbook Connector by Éric Bischoff, and Crystal icons from KDE, many newly created by Nuno Pinheiro and Robert Wadley.

This tutorial deals with setting up a Linux firewall based on IPCop.

To deal with the more than 10 billion pages and tens of terabytes of information on Google's servers, the company combines cheap machines with plenty of redundancy, Hoelzle said. Its commodity servers cost around $1,000 apiece, and Google's architecture places them into interconnected nodes.

All machines run on a stripped-down kernel. The distribution is Red Hat (Quote, Chart), but Hoelzle said Google doesn't use much of the distro. Moreover, Google has created its own patches for things that haven't been fixed in the original kernel.

[ Ed: GREAT READ -tadelste]

Throughout my experience, many users on Linux Help Forums or IRC have had questions that require information from /proc to diagnose. And every single time, I've had to walk them through the process of using and understanding /proc so that I could help them with their problem. For that reason, I think that a brief tutorial on the basics of /proc is in order.

I've been using the tutorials/reviews information from this site to try and set up my laptop to automatically detect the active network (cable at work, wireless at home) and set up the environment as appropriate. This has been slow going, due to a WEP problem I have. This begins with an Archos PMA430 (an audio/video/PIM hand held device) that has built in wireless networking. And it runs a Linux OS, using Qtopia (the most important secondary reason for its purchase).