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On Tuesday, January 25th Mandriva introduced a new project: Metisse LiveCD. In this article we are going to investigate the features offered by this promising project and see if Metisse can compete with the popular desktops in terms of ergonomics and ease of use.

A lot of virtual ink has been spilled over the recent announcement of Google Apps Premier Edition, yet I am compelled to spill more. Google Apps combines a suite of applications under your own domain including Gmail, Calendar, Talk, and Docs and Spreadsheets. Whether it dents the Microsoft Office hegemony will play out over the next couple of years.

BackTrack is the most Top rated linux live distribution focused on penetration testing. With no installation whatsoever, the analysis platform is started directly from the CD-Rom and is fully accessible within minutes. It's evolved from the merge of the two wide spread distributions Whax and Auditor Security Collection. By joining forces and replacing these distribution the BackTrack could gain a massive popularity and was voted in 2006 as #1 at the surveil of insecure.org. Security professionals as well as new-comers are using it as their favorite toolset all over the globe.

This morning NVIDIA released a new Linux display driver. While this driver was not the Linux 100.XX.XX driver that was expected, it was a minor update to append support for the new Quadro graphics cards. In addition, GeForce 8800 series SLI is now supported.

KwikByte is shipping a tiny, low-powered ARM-based SBC (single-board computer) aimed at applications such as kiosks and streaming audio clients. The KBAT9261 ("BAT6") is based on an Atmel ARM9 processor, supports PoE (power-over-Ethernet), runs Linux and native development tools, and is available with an optional enclosure.

Blue Cliff, Inc. has announced the development of a non-proprietary open source laboratory interface to VistA-Office Electronic Health record system (VOE). Blue Cliff is a Hawaii-based software consultant and development company specializing in providing installation, configuration and customization support for VistA and its derivatives.

LinuxChix, a social networking group for women who use Linux and other open source software, was formed in 1999 by Deb Richardson, a Linux user who was frustrated by the attitudes of many other Linux-oriented groups. Since then, the organisation has grown dramatically, and there are currently more than 40 regional LinuxChix chapters around the world. Until February, LinuxChix had chapters in Australia in Melbourne and Sydney. Following discussions at the Linux.Conf.Au conference in Sydney in January, members realised that a national group would better serve the country. Last month the groups united to form AussieChix, a new nationwide chapter that makes the group more accommodating to women from across Australia, whilst also improving the communications between the members of the previous chapters.

Linux server revenue grew slightly in the fourth quarter of 2006, according to the latest research from IDC. But while overall Linux usage is growing, the number of physical Linux servers being shipped to enterprises may be suffering due to the trend of virtualization.

If you're a FOSS enthusiast who keeps fit by exercising or playing sports, it's time you used an open source application to track your activities. With these programs you can get a good overview of your exercises or create diagrams and statistics for specific time ranges and sport types.

MindTouch has become the first company to be officially certified by VMware as a supplier of virtualised wiki software.

Australia's future economic prosperity will depend on it embracing the principles of community-driven technologies such as Linux and Second Life, according to Glen Boreham.

Red Hat's Fedora Core 6 Linux distribution has reached another big milestone, racking up two million installed users barely two months after tallying 1 million installed users. With the new threshold crossing, it is unclear whether Fedora 6 is the No. 1 Linux distribution in use today, but internetnews.com has learned that preliminary discussions are underway that could see Novell's OpenSUSE Linux distribution partner with Red Hat's Fedora to drive open statistics about Linux use.

Automated Image & Restore (AIR) is an open source application that provides a GUI front end to the dd/dcfldd (Dataset Definition (dd)) command. AIR is designed to easily create forensic disk/partition images. It supports MD5/SHAx hashes, SCSI tape drives, imaging over a TCP/IP network, splitting images, and detailed session logging.

Citizens of modern societies lead highly regulated lives. Whether as individuals we agree or disagree with the degree to which governments control our existence, we nevertheless benefit from a myriad of laws and regulations that seek to ensure our safety and welfare. The range of regulation is breath taking, encompassing the purity of air and water, the quality of food, the sanitation of towns and cities, the safety of transportation systems, and the delivery of utilities and other essential services, to name just a few.

We have compared the 32-bit and 64-bit performance of Ubuntu and started a performance comparison of Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, but how does the performance of the upcoming Feisty Fawn release compare to that of Fedora 7? In this article we have enclosed benchmarks from Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft, Fedora 7 Test 2, and Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 5. In gaming and desktop benchmarks, which of these Linux distributions is faster? We hope to answer that question today.

An ultra-efficient new RISC-based processor architecture has gained its first Linux distribution support, according to representatives of the open source T2 SDE project. The project's cross-platform Linux build tools now support Atmel's AVR32 architecture, project representatives say.

The idea of switching to Linux has become an increasingly active topic of consideration over the past few years in Japan. Starting in late 2004, a trial study conducted at a handful of schools across the country, comprising a total of roughly a thousand students, experimented with using Linux-based systems in the classroom environment. Three hundred Linux-installed computers were distributed to these schools and subsequently used in a variety of classroom activities such as science experiments, report-writing, and internet-based research. While certain issues arose in the context of these activities related to dependencies on Windows-based software such as Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, the project on the whole was largely successful and students are reported to have enjoyed and benefited from working in the Linux environment.

A freshly installed copy of Firefox is a great software package, but what makes this open-source browser so special is the ability to customize it via extensions and themes to really make it yours. The problem is, there are so many available add-ins, it's tough to know what's worth installing and what's just going to junk up your system. That's where we come in. We've ferreted out 20 of the best extensions and add-ins used and recommended by hardcore Web surfers, developers and IT pros. Whether you're looking for more streamlined surfing, improved look and feel, cool design tools or serious Web development help, there's something (and more than likely several things) here for you.

A school district technology director is making wholesale changes in her employer's IT system by migrating most of 5,000 Windows desktops to a new setup based primarily on Linux-powered desktop PCs and thin clients. The change aims to reduce annual costs, offer many more applications, and use less energy. Windsor, Calif. School District IT administrator Heather Carver is migrating most of the district's 70 servers and most of its 5,000 desktop machines from a mostly-Windows environment that is quickly becoming obsolete to a new mixed environment that includes PCs running SUSE Linux, Wyse Linux thin-client terminals, and a smattering of Mac and Windows machines.

In an effort to build a simple, lightweight, but useful container for Web applications, the folks at Apache created Apache Geronimo Little-G, a stripped-down version of the original Geronimo application server.