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I'm sure many of you are excited about today's GNOME release and the release of Firefox 1.5 beta 1. Kris and I decided to write Linux.Ars sections about GNOME and Firefox customization in order to celebrate the releases. In this edition of Linux.Ars, Kris will teach you how to use command line build tools to construct a complete Firefox extension, I will teach you how to add context menu items to Nautilus using the Nautilus Actions extension, and Ian introduces an LDAP utility called Luma. I want to personally thank those of you who sent me e-mails with comments and suggestions! Linux.Ars is all about you, so don't be afraid to get involved! Want to do a section for a future edition? Have a suggestion for a topic that you want us to write about? I would love some feedback. Feel free to send me or post in the discussion thread comments, complaints, suggestions, requests, free hardware, death threats, or disparaging remarks about my assorted deficiencies. Keep those comments coming!

Novell has announced that its latest operating system, SuSE Linux 10.0, will hit the shelves in early October 2005. The platform is the first to incorporate input from the openSUSE.org project, a recently launched community initiative sponsored by Novell that aims to promote the use of Linux everywhere. Novell said that the involvement of this group means that SuSE Linux 10.0 includes code changes and bug fixes initiated with developer input from across the worldwide Linux community.

Microsoft Corp has filed a new appeal against European Commission antitrust sanctions in an attempt to expedite a decision on whether it will be forced to share communications source code with open source software vendors.

DistroWatch reports - The GNOPPIX project has released an Ubuntu-based live CD with a preview release of Gnome 2.12: The GNOPPIX project proudly presents the first beta release of version 2.12 of the GNOPPIX Linux live CD. This version comes with Gnome 2.12, updates and lot of improvements. Gnoppix 2.12 beta1 is available in four languages: German, English, French and Hindi.

OSDir has some great shots of GNOME 2.12 Beta on GNOPPIX Linux 2.12 Beta.

Here in Part 3, I present a story that in several aspects is different from the previous stories. Enter Anna F. Leopardi, an elementary school teacher at the Direzione Didattica Statale Terzo Circolo of Pescara, which is the administrative center of the smallest province of the Abruzzi region. Anna is not only a free software user and evangelist; she doesn't mind getting her hands dirty doing some Linux customization hacking, which she then uses at her school. In early 2005, she also taught at a professional training course on open source and schools that was organized by the Province of Pescara.

A few months ago Joe Barr introduced locate and friends, and included a brief reference to rlocate. rlocate, by Rasto Levrinc, is based on slocate, which is an improvement on traditional locate, an old Unix command used to perform fast pathname searches. Besides adding a few commodity options, like the -i argument for case-insensitive search, rlocate's main feature is secure path searching, which presents only paths to the user that he has permissions to.

Users looking to file claims online for government help must be running Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later with JavaScript enabled. That blocks everyone running Linux, Apple Macintosh computers, and Windows users running alternate browsers such as Firefox or Opera.

Zimbra, the open-source startup that lured Scott Dietzen away from his former job as chief technology officer of BEA Systems, has released a beta version of its enterprise collaboration software. The suite includes an AJAX client, as well as server software

Linux and a lack of SCOsource licensing revenue continue to push SCO's revenue down, but OpenServer 6 is doing well so far.

"As your Linux/Unix network grows, you're probably going to get tired of running around to individual machines to do updates and fixes, unless it's part of your fitness program. My ideal sysadmin scenario is rather like Dr. Evil's submarine lair: lounge about with a cat on my lap, occasionally pushing a button..."

Rumors abound about the US Nuclear arsenal lacking documentation of its software from twenty years ago. Someone even said the US consulted Russia for help. With new Government regulations in place, you have to have a long-term strategy to retrieve your old documentation. Those are the business drivers that spurred OASIS to create the open document format - compliance issues that will require people to maintain records for decades. Now, try and retrieve an archived document from Microsoft Word Version 5. Oops. You just can't change formats anymore to make people buy your new products, Bill.

The "My First PC" campaign launched by private companies in Chile with government support has drawn criticism from free software activists, who are working on their own initiatives to expand access to the Internet and the information society.

This is all so easy in the paper world: you take a good, thick, wet pen and proudly scribble your signature at the bottom of a white, shiny page. Signatures in the real world are easy: they reflect our true personality, can be changed and altered at whim until we attain the perfect shape we are after and deem truly unique or representative. The e-mail world however has introduced many challenges. Indeed, compatibility issues, bandwidth requirements and the general lack of support for rich formatting in e-mails has reduced most of us to add “signatures” that are often no more than a couple lines of plain text.

"As your Linux/Unix network grows, you're probably going to get tired of running around to individual machines to do updates and fixes, unless it's part of your fitness program. My ideal sysadmin scenario is rather like Dr. Evil's submarine lair: lounge about with a cat on my lap, occasionally pushing a button..."

Parallels Inc. Wednesday released a beta version of its first product, a virtual machine platform that runs multiple operating systems concurrently. Parallels Workstation runs the Red Hat, Novell/SUSE, Mandriva, Debian, and Fedora Core Linux distributions, FreeBSD, and all versions of Windows -- even "legacy" systems such as OS/2 and MS-DOS, the company said. Each "guest" OS (operating system) can be launched and utilized in networked, portable, independent virtual environments, according to the company. Virtual machine properties, computing priorities, and file structures are managed using an "intuitive" control console, the company said. The "host" OS can be various Linux distributions or Windows.

The amaroK developers are currently working on the 1.3 release of their live CD. If you are an Open Source artist and are interested in creating the amaroK 1.3 live CD artwork then join the 7 day artwork challenge

ZENworks 7 Asset Management Also Expands Cross-Platform Support and Secures SIIA Certification

MUNICH -- Red Hat, Inc. (NASDAQ:RHAT - News), the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today announced plans to introduce expanded language support services for Russian speakers. The new Russian language software and services will become available from the end of September as an integral element of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. spacer

Integrating Fedora Linux into a Windows network isn't as impossible as it might sound -- in fact, it's reasonable and easy, as long as you use the SAMBA utilities, writes senior editor Mark Rais in an article at ReallyLinux.com. "I share every main step necessary to implement such a SAMBA server within a Windows environment. Once integrated, a Linux server looks and acts exactly like any other server on a Windows intranet. You will have the ability to drag and drop files, view server contents and directories using Windows File Manager, and even edit files on a Linux server from any Windows desktop," Rais writes. The article is a guide to setting up a full-fledged Fedora Linux-based SAMBA server. Rais is also the author of Linux for the Rest of Us, 2nd Edition.

This month, I am going to deviate from my usual format. Instead of talking about a specific programming tool, I am going to discuss last month's LinuxWorld and some of the software, tools and other things from the show. LinuxWorld was interesting for a number of reasons. For one, it was bigger than the previous year's show by more than 20 percent. Although LW again was dominated by the "suits", here and there were buried gems, some of which I discuss here. For those of you who didn't attend or who had only Expo passes, the .org pavilions were on the second floor, along with the seminar rooms--usually restricted to paying attendees. Keep this booth arrangement in mind for future shows.