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Apparently, some people take pride in attacking Free software. With statements such as “we would like to strike similar patent deals with all the Linux vendors, but we had to start somewhere” or even “the Free Software movement is dead. Linux doesn’t exist in 2007. Even Linus has got a job today,” Bill Hilf is no popular figure these days.

The Linux Expo of Southern California has opened the Call For Papers for the 6th Annual Southern California Linux Expo, to be held February 8th, 9th, & 10th, 2008.

A recent story entitled, "Dearly Departed: Companies and Products That Didn't Deserve to Die" didn't cover Linux or open-source companies. That got me to thinking. So here, without further adieu, is my list of five Linux companies that died before their time.

"After 6 months of careful integration and testing, I'm happy to announce availability of Linux 2.4.35," 2.4 maintainer Willy Tarreau announced on the lkml. This is the second stable 2.4 kernel released since Willy became the 2.4 kernel maintainer nearly a year ago in August of 2006. Source level changes can be viewed through the linux-2.4 gitweb interface.

Web pages have become a major functional component of the daily lives of millions of people; you, the Web developer, are in a position to make that part of everyone's lives better.

At my work the employees are in the fortunate position that they are free to choose whatever OS they want to work with. The only thing that's banned (unofficially) so far is Windows Vista. In such a heterogeneous environment it makes sense to share our files through Samba. It's one of the few protocols that any OS can speak. If you're running Windows Server 2003 then you can't use the smbfs driver that most Linux distributions ship by default. You'll need to use the CIFS filesystem driver and you'll need to edit /etc/fstab. Adding the required fstab entries is actually quite easy as I will show, but on Debian and it's derivative distributions you get a nasty "CIFS VFS: No response" error when you subsequently try to reboot or shutdown your machine. I will show you how to get rid of that too.

In what could prove to be of major importance to the future of motherboard and component data transfer rates, the Photonics Technology Lab at Intel has announced a silicon laser modulator that can encode data at 40Gb/sec.

On her weblog, Mozilla Corporation CEO Mitchell Baker has announced that Mozilla Thunderbird is to move to a "new, separate organizational setting" as the Mozilla Foundation continues to focus ever more closely on Mozilla Firefox. While the Mozilla Foundation supports a number of projects, its taxable subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation is responsible for only Firefox and Thunderbird. However, it has become increasingly clear that Firefox is the priority. The resources allocated to Firefox dwarf those allocated to Thunderbird and recent projects such as the initiative to improve Mozilla support exclude Thunderbird.

Configuration can be a maintenance mess and add to a developer's burden. This article introduces a Java framework with which developers can define their application's configuration in terms of high-level interfaces; the framework then generates automatic implementations of these interfaces backed by a physical configuration source, like a properties file or database. This approach, designed and detailed by Merlin Hughes, is intended to improve on the practices of using string constants and manual type conversion when handling configuration data, while maintaining compatibility with existing configuration tools and files.

The Open Source Initiative approved on July 25 its first new license in quite some time: the Common Public Attribution License, which is essentially the Mozilla Public License with a new attribution clause. But the road to approval was long and expensive, Ross Mayfield, CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, which submitted the license, told eWEEK in an interview at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference here.

Mozilla Corp. CEO Mitchell Baker announced yesterday on her weblog that because of"the enormous energy and community focused on the Web, Firefox, and the ecosystem around it," the organization is seeking"a new, separate organizational setting" for the Thunderbird email client.

On July 22nd a new set of kernel packages was released for Vector Linux, my chosen primary and current favorite distribution. This was the second build of the 2.6.21 kernel with Con Kolivas’ CK2 patchset, replacing a test build released on July 8. In the past the only reason I’ve recommended upgrading a kernel is to close security vulnerabilities or to add support for new hardware. Recently, though, there is another very good reason: noticeably improved performance, particularly if you are currently using kernel 2.6.19 or earlier.

Yesterday the OpenBSD Foundation debuted as a Canadian nonprofit organization intended to serve as"a single point of contact for persons and organizations requiring a legal entity to deal with when they wish to support OpenBSD in any way." Developers Bob Beck, Kjell Wooding, and Ken Westerback will serve as the foundation's directors. Membership, according to the bylaws, "shall be limited to persons interested in furthering the objects of the corporation and shall consist of anyone whose application for admission as a member has received the approval of the board of directors of the corporation." However, the foundation's Web site notes, it is "not actively seeking new members at this time."

Microsoft realizes it has a schizophrenic relationship with open source software but can't seem to find any meds capable of correcting the situation. During a speech today at OSCON, Microsoft's open source chief Bill Hilf revealed that Microsoft will submit its Shared Source License to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) for approval. Microsoft's decision to make peace with the OSI – the self-proclaimed protector of open source software – ends a rather combative, multi-year debate between the parties.

Three months ago, former sponsor Bank of America dropped the affinity credit card of the Linux Fund, the"public charity" with a stated mission to support free and open source software. This week the project emerged from hibernation and began accepting applications anew for its on-again, off-again Tux Visa card. New underwriter U.S. Bank is offering consumers a platinum, student, or basic Visa card, each of which provides a small cash reward to open source projects selected by the Linux Fund advisory board. What changed?

I am always looking for great Linux utility tools that can help me manage my PC. Parted Magic 1.8 is one of them.... Great bootable CD plus one is able to place it on a USB key. A must utility for every PC user! Personally I have always used GParted for all my partitioning needs. GParted alone is a great tool. What interested me about Parted Magic was that it included Gparted plus a few more excellent utilities that I think I could find very useful. The USB role of Parted Magic was something that one could use and so I downloaded the iso from the Parted Magic Web Site and began my testing.

Since May, ingimp, a modified version of the GIMP, has collected daily logs on what users do with the program in the hope of improving its usability. The richness of this data is unprecedented, yet improving the GIMP is only a sideshow for the project. What ingimp is really designed to do, according to the project's leader, is develop the software and practices to put free and open source software (FOSS) usability testing on a professional footing "without placing an undue burden on either the developers or users."

Motorola knows that product development needs to move quickly for the company to stay competitive -- and it’s using Linux to hasten the effort. “We do all of our advanced technology development on Linux,” says Mark VandenBrink, a Motorola fellow and chief architect of systems software at the company. Software developers are using Linux to build Web browsers, multimedia players and other mobile applications, VandenBrink says. The Linux community can develop new phones with new features quickly for a variety of global markets.

Today, Microsoft took another step in its relationship with the open source software community. By bringing up a new web property that clearly outlines Microsoft’s position on OSS by providing specific information about Microsoft, the OSS community and the interaction between the two.

Examine how to use the Network Information Service (NIS) to share core databases between Linux and UNIX, and how to use the Network File System (NFS) to share file systems, both with direct links and through the automounter. Although UNIX and Linux are similar, there are some differences between the two that can complicate the process of integrating the two systems. Both, for example, share the same authentication system, but most systems are also standalone. Sharing this authentication information enables you to provide a single sign-on (SSO) functionality to any of the servers in your network.