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Distrowatch reports - A new beta version of Mandriva Linux 2006 appeared on the mirrors over the weekend. Like the first one a week ago, the new beta release, labelled as 2006 0.1.1, has not yet been officially announced, but the good news is that the mirroring problems we mentioned in last week's DistroWatch Weekly have been solved and the new release is now available from the usual Mandriva mirror sites.

OSDir has a handful of nice shots of this fresh Mandriva 2006 beta.

An open-source software vendor is petitioning the Australian consumer watchdog to make it possible for all name-brand PC resellers to sell systems without an operating system on board. Melbourne vendor Cybersource also asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to make it compulsory for Microsoft to offer access to all its document formats to enable interchange and interoperability with other operating systems.

Microsoft is bowing to pressure from users to improve compatibility between its systems software and open-source technology. The company has run extensive advertising campaigns promoting its products against open-source rivals and chief executive officer Steve Ballmer has denounced Linux as inferior to the Microsoft Windows platform.

First International Computer (FIC) says its new full-function webpad is powerful enough "to truly marshal the possibilities of a wireless world." The AquaPAD+ is optionally available with embedded Linux, and boasts built-in 802.11g, IrDA, PCMCIA, dual-USB, and an optional Bluetooth USB dongle.

Circuits and Packets signs deal to offer Linux training at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and grow free software skills in Kenya.

A Linux Networx super cluster is now part of the technology arsenal at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), a company that exists solely to provide warheads for the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent program. But AWE isn't done looking at different solutions for its ever-increasing computational power needs.

Empower Technologies has appointed Wipro as the authorized service provider and system integrator for its hardware/software Linux development kit for a Texas Instruments (TI) SoC. Wipro will provide third party development and support services to customers of Empower's LDK5910, based on TI's OMAP5910 dual-core RISC/DSP chip.

I've sometimes been labeled a cheerleader for Free Software. This doesn't bother me too much; there's no doubt that I am a lot more gung-ho on Linux and related technologies than most of my colleagues. But lest I seem like a full-time penguin apologist who can't fairly critique his platform of choice, I'm using this month's Free Agent to revel in that oldest pastime of tech columnists: I'm going to gripe.

I decided to look into reducing the time it takes to boot my current setup, which is Fedora 4. In doing so I was able to reduce the boot time of my Fedora 4 installation to less than 25 seconds (just above 24 seconds on average). Below I have documented what I did, and what you can use to potentially reduce your boot up time for Linux.

Have you considered setting up a PHP 5 on your Linux server, but not had the time to learn how? This article will help guide you through the installation of a PHP 5 environment using the industry's first integrated PHP environment that includes the IBMCloudscape database server. Installation and configuration is greatly simplified using Zend Core for IBM compared to setting up a complete development and deployment environment from scratch.

Eclipse based Agent Building and Learning Environment (ABLE) enables developers to build intelligent Java agents on Linux using machine reasoning and implement their own AbleBeans and AbleAgents and plug them into ABLE’s Agent Editor.

Welcome to our issue number 6 of Fedora Weekly News

The UK Atomic Weapons Establishment plc (AWE) is using a visualisation cluster system based on open source software. The cluster is adopted for research activities into new techniques for visualising data produced by computer simulation facilities. The company Linux Networx is responsible for the development and insertion of the system.

One of the things I usually take care of as a Gentoo packages maintainer is sending patches to upstream developers. If a patch is applied upstream, we can remove it from future versions of a package so we have less work to do to maintain the package. Unfortunately, it seems that other distributions and packagers don't always do the same. This is true not only for Linux distributions such as Debian, Fedora Core, and SUSE, but also for maintainers of packages in places like FreeBSD's Ports, DarwinPorts or Fink. Here are some tips for developers on making things easier for yourself and everyone who has to touch your code.

Features Anyone keeping track of the security vendor/technology hype knows that IPS has quickly replaced IDS as the “next big thing”. Depending on who you are, you may chalk this up to yet another infosec fad, or you could be of the opinion that IPS is actually making good on the promises that IDS never lived up to. I think it can be both – depending on your situation.

The South African State Information Technology Agency (SITA) plans to develop an electronic health record system (EHR) for the national Department of Health. For the nationwide adoption of the project, the department considers an open source based development and calls for tenders. SITA has extended the deadline for responses to its request for information to August 12, 2005.

Windows on Linux software vendor Win4Lin this week announced plans to expand into South Africa through local distributor Workgroup.

Desktop Linux has open-source developers' attention.

The catalyst for much innovation is laziness. Ask any old person. Years of strenuous room crossing to change TV channels led to the invention of the infrared remote control. Years of strenuous lifting and pointing of these remotes led to the invention of the direction-less RF remote control. Finally, years of strenuous searching for all these remotes has led to the invention of remote control applications for Bluetooth-equipped cell phones. Short of cybernetic implants, this may be the easiest way to control applications without having to touch a keyboard or mouse.

A group of students at the IT University in Copenhagen, Denmark, has launched what it hopes may become "The Linux of Beers" - it has created an "open-source" beer by publishing its recipe and brand under a Creative Commons license. Calling itself Vores Øl Group (Vores Øl is Danish for "Our Beer"), the group says it has created Our Beer "as an experiment in applying modern open source ideas and methods on a traditional real-world product."