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Much of today's enterprise-level software on UNIX caters to the business needs of large companies. And so it must support emerging technologies and follow the rapidly evolving market trends, such as the proliferation of the powerful, flexible Linux operating system. Because much of this software is large, multi-threaded, and multi-process, porting it to Linux presents challenges.

Top Linux seller Red Hat acknowledged on Friday a misstep in its relations with technology enthusiasts but said the profit motive is helping it to mend its ways.

Six exhibitions and conferences that will cover Free Software and GNU/Linux will take place within the following weeks in several cities where the Debian project participates.

Opponents of software patents gathered in Brussels on Thursday to accuse the European Council of turning Europe into a banana republic.

The announcement of a Linux deal between Unisys and SAP, originally slated for this week's LinuxWorld, has now been rescheduled to next week, LinuxPlanet has been told. Meanwhile, Unisys is forging ahead with its growing commitment to enterprise Linux.

The LinuxWorld Conference and Expo held in Boston this week looked a lot like any Linux show, with suits and T-shirts and jeans co-mingled on both sides of the booths. The 140 or so exhibitors included a respectable number of mainstream industry players, like AMD, Apple, BMC, Computer Associates, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, Oracle, Sun, and Unisys, along with the leading Linux vendors, and usual-suspect Linux/open source/free software organizations and groups such as the Free Software Foundation and the Etherboot Foundation, and Debian, Fedora, GNOME, and X.org. Booth traffic seemed adequate, and attendees focused on getting info.

Linuxlookup.com is reporting on six exhibitions and conferences that will cover Free Software and GNU/Linux will take place within the following weeks in several cities where the Debian project participates. Everyone in these areas are welcome to attend these conferences, meet Debian developers and users, exchange GnuPG fingerprints, discuss various topics on Debian and Free Software, and otherwise participate in our vibrant community. More information on locations, times and dates are listed.

In just a few short months, an open-source software package called Xen has been catapulted from obscurity to the limelight as many computing industry powers throw their weight behind the project.

The Open Source Development Lab is bringing potential good news for carrier network managers at the LinuxWorld show this week. The non-profit organization has announced new versions of its Carrier Grade Linux and Data Center Linux operating system specifications.

It began with an email invitation to play in the Celebrity Challenge with an open source community leader and AMD and Sun Microsystems executives on Tuesday morning at the LinuxWorld Convention and Exposition in Boston. The game was not unfamiliar to me: Unreal Tournament 2004, which was released last spring and works wonderfully on GNU/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Although I missed my home setup -- the 64-bit edition of UT2004 running over 64-bit Gentoo on my Athlon 64 system -- all the players were on a level playing field, as we were all equally disadvantaged. But the stakes were high and dozens of people were watching us prove that GNU/Linux is not just for servers and workstations.

In this month's mocking toast To Evil! Danny O'Brien finds evil within Sun's Hotspot Java Machine, Sun's CSL (the other license), and the foolhardiness that is the "secret" email filtering techniques of our ugly American Verizon.net in Europe: "... banning email coming from countries outside the USA. Given that most spam comes from American companies, this sounds a bit like fighting stings by locking yourself in a beehive, and smearing yourself with royal jelly. But mostly, it's odd because eventually those foreigners are going to find someone they *can* communicate with. And once they snap out of that crazy bloo-bloo language they all speak, and talk proper English to a journalist, Word Will Get Out."

Erik van Konijnenburg announced Yaird, "Yet Another mkInitRD". Implemented in Perl, he describes the work in progress and proof of concept as "a rewrite of mkinitrd based on hotplug algorithms."

It's not only the code that will get sucked off the desktop, but also the content itself! Motorola, Sony, and Linspire have both announced initiatives to let you play your music on your mobile phones. Motorola is teaming up with Apple's iTunes stores, and is going to allow only DRM'd music. For that reason, the more open Linspire and Sony offerings are more disruptive and more interesting. The Sony deal won't be announced until March, so for now, let's take a look at the Linspire deal.

I started using Linux when SUSE Linux 6.1 came out. I've fiddled with Corel Linux, Mandrake, Turbolinux, and Slackware 9.0, but since I came across Arch Linux 0.7, a.k.a. "Wombat," I've become an avid convert.

Many factors should be taken into account when approaching the fork in Red Hat's Linux road.

I was glancing through the headlines at CNET news today, and I was surprised to see an article by RMS, the president of the FSF. What makes this surprising is that CNET always seems to have a vaguely pro-m$ agenda. I read through the article, and my surprise diminished.

On the final day, all signs point to success in Boston.

Xj3D is an open source toolkit for X3D (the XML and network-savvy successor to VRML). This new Xj3D M10 is the first release with an installer for Linux.

With new threats showing up every day, administrators find it increasingly hard to establish continued trust with their filesystems. Luckily, it's easier than you might think to maintain omniscient control of your filesystem. Through effective use of a filesystem integrity checker, you can keep a watchful eye on every aspect of an important machine's filesystem.

Organizations must consider licensing, platform differences carefully.