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A conversation between two IT management types displayed a definite mistrust of Microsoft's sales reps during a re-licensing negotiation. Yet we're supposed to trust a cmpany with a long history of dishonest behavior and a hostile attitude toward the FOSS community with the OSI stamp of approval?

In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) gave us Mosaic, the first Web browser with a graphical user interface. Today, the NCSA is still innovating, creating a project that monitors how global climate change is affecting plants and wildlife, one that tracks oil spills, and another that predicts the possible effects of seismographic activity on bridges and other structures. To facilitate communication and collaboration between stations, NCSA is making use of the Web infrastructure it helped to launch almost 15 years ago, in a research program called the CyberCollaboratory. Not surprisingly, open source software is an integral part of the Web-based intiative.

Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, codenamed “Etch”, was released on April 8th, 2007. Debian GNU/Linux 4.0r1, codenamed “Etch” was released on August 15th, 2007. And as usual, the media distributed these news around the globe. It is so unimportant an event, that no experienced Debian user or even developer would care less about it.

This tutorial describes how to install Simple Invoices on a Debian Etch server. Simple Invoices is a web-based, basic invoicing system that lets you create and manage your invoices, export them as PDF or Excel files, email them to your customers, etc. It is intended for small businesses/organizations and home users.

My brother Willi isn't a frequent blogger. But what he is, is a teacher/instructor for M$ OS and office software. Now he explains - in German - his experiences with Vista, compares it with Linux, and comes to the conclusion that everything looks pretty 'stolen' from a user's point of view. He is using Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on his Biostar barebone machine, and recently bought a HP laptop with Vista and Office.

[wjl was kind enough to translate the post for us. Check the "read more" link for the english translation. — Sander]

Ingo Molnar has just released a version 20 of his controversial CFS scheduler (currently added to 2.6.23-rc* series) for many old kernel release: “By popular demand, here is release -v20 of the CFS scheduler. It is a full backport of the latest & greatest v2.6.23-rc3 CFS code to v2.6.22.5, v2.6.21.7 and v2.6.20.16. Also, the backported CFS scheduler enables people to test suspected scheduler regressions on older codebases too, to filter out the effects of other changes.

Citrix announced Aug. 15 that it is acquiring XenSource, supplier of the Xen open source hypervisor, for $500 million. In a follow-up interview with Wes Wasson, corporate VP of worldwide marketing at Citrix, and Peter Levine, CEO of XenSource, InformationWeek learned how Citrix will try to maintain the Xen open source community, while adding to its product line.

EtherBoot isn't an application you install on your Linux desktop, but if you run computers that boot over a network -- or would like to explore network booting for either fun or profit -- it is an essential free software project. These three casual videos will introduce you to some of the people behind the Etherboot/gPXE project and some of the people and principles behind GNU/Linux networking in general. If you are not familiar with the pace and style of free or open source software development and the people who make it happen, you are about to be amazed at the fact that these are not boringly serious individuals, but fun-loving folks whose rare F2F (Face to Face) meetings are full of laughter and camaraderie.

Ubuntu and its sister Linux distributions -- including Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Edbuntu -- finds themselves in an enviable yet thankless position in the Linux universe. That the 'Buntus are the most popular choice among Linux users is without question. Ubuntu is nearly always at the top of Distrowatch.com's popularity list, its forums are busy -- make that very busy -- and also very friendly. New users are welcomed, their hands are held, and command-line fixes are offered along with gentle encourgement.

Construct a highly available Apache Web server cluster that spans multiple physical or virtual Linux® servers in 5 easy steps with Linux Virtual Server and Heartbeat v2. To get the most out of this article, you should be familiar with Linux and basic networking, and you should have Apache servers already configured. Our examples are based on standard SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES10) installations, but savvy users of other distributions should be able to adapt the methods shown here.

A new book for Systems Administrators who are interested in designing and setting up a Linux thin client network has been published by Packt. Written by David Richards, Linux Thin Client Networks Design and Deployment provides enough knowledge to understand how the technology works, make decisions about deployment, and then implement a stable work environment.

Putting another hitch into a product release that has already been roundly booed by critics, Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg put out a note Wednesday saying that Palm's new Foleo has been delayed. Initially priced at $500, the Foleo is essentially a Linux-based, large-screen companion device to the Treo, allowing users to create e-mails and edit documents using a 10-inch display and a full-sized keyboard. The new device, which weighs a relatively hefty 2.5 pounds, synchs automatically with the user's Treo, and includes a battery with up to five hours of life.

I wanted to see for myself just how quickly a machine would be infected, how it would be infected, and how frequently it would be probed. Rather than putting a target machine openly on the Internet, I decided to use the Nepenthes malware collector. Nepenthes is a low interaction Honeypot, which emulates known vulnerabilities and captures worms as they attempt to infect it.

Why are Intel the market leader in graphics chips, tho they don't even make separate cards? And why will they continue to be leaders, and be stronger than ever? Easy answer: they are the ones who support Linux.

I headed in to town from the desert this afternoon to gas up and get groceries, and to catch up on all things ODF/OOXML. In scanning my Google Alerts, I ran into this posting by Microsoft's Jason Matusow, himself just in from vacation. In that post, Jason presents, how to say delicately, less than all of the facts about what's happening with the US vote on OOXML.

In late June of this year, I made a type of executive decision. I have been a software developer by trade throughout my entire professional career. I began programming commercially in 1987 and have followed the progression from MS-DOS 3.31 through 6.22, then Windows 3.x, 95 and up. I’ve moved from the library of custom-developed tools in C and assembly during my MS-DOS days to the GUI + libraries present in Windows OSes. Still, even today, I continue to code for Windows even though I am migrating much of that knowledge to the Linux side after having such a successful run with Ubuntu.

You might remember, that a little over a year ago kde.nl graciously hosted the KDE multimedia meeting (or k3m for short). Whilst we were there, hacking away, the folks from Source21 joined us to do some interviews for their open source software vidcast. If you take some time to watch the video, you’ll hear from Martijn Klingens (KDE marketing, KDE.nl), Matthias Kretz (Phonon) and myself (Amarok) speaking about our respective areas of expertise.

The eponymous Zonbu is actually a low-energy miniature PC currently in "public beta" testing. There’s no fan, no hard disk, and no Microsoft Windows. A laptop hard disk can be installed using the internal IDE slot, as can a Bluetooth or WiFi card using the mini-PCI slot (a spot for an external WiFi LED is already marked on the aluminum case.) Also included are a massive internal heat sink, a 4GB Compact Flash card, six USB 2.0 ports, and Gentoo Linux.

From “developers, developers, developers” (produce software) to “advertisers, advertisers, advertisers” (market poor products) to “lobbyists, lobbyists, lobbyists” (start cheating). Yesterday we mentioned the use of large heaps of money in pursuit for standards domination. We also took a look at some of the latest ‘funny business’ around the world. There is a lot more coming at the moment, so let’s break it down into subheadings.

Linux training and laptop specialist LinuxCertified will offer a three-day class in embedded and real-time Linux development. As with all LinuxCertified courses, participants will receive the use of a Linux laptop that they then have the option to purchase. Set for Sept. 12-14 in Sunnyvale, Calif., LinuxCertified's embedded Linux course promises to examine, "why Linux, how to embed Linux, and how to measure and obtain real-time performance," the vendor said.