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Linux, the free operating system that's challenging Microsoft Corp.'s dominant Windows product, got a small but important boost yesterday as Seattle's RealNetworks Inc. announced agreements with several key Linux distributors. An analyst said the deals also show RealNetworks is learning how to profit in the Linux marketplace -- a tricky feat.

As part of its transition to an open-source software model, Novell Inc. will scale back its investment in some proprietary technology that competes with open-source alternatives, a company executive said Monday.

BEA Systems will jump into the debate over whether Java should be made open source on Wednesday, and comments from one of its senior executives suggest the application server vendor is leaning in favor of the move.

This article describes Performance Inspector, which contains a suite of performance tools for Linux. The author describes how to download and install the required software and tools, and how to collect performance data. She also provides details on how to use the five basic tools, which you can use to analyze performance of your C/C++ and Java applications, as well as performance of your system as a whole.

Why nightly builds improve code integrity and how to incorporate them into your product's lifecycle.

Microsoft is losing another customer to an alternative desktop operating system, with Allied Irish Bank, one of Ireland's largest banking and financial services groups, set to transition its branch-dependent applications and migrate about 7,500 desktop users off Windows and onto the Sun Java Desktop System over the next year or so.

Those interested in testing the various efforts focused on improving Linux desktop performance may wish to try the patches available from the CPU Scheduler Evaluation project page. Peter Williams announced his latest patch against the 2.6.7 stable Linux kernel which provides the ability to select a CPU scheduler at runtime. The current version of the patch allows a user to select either Con Kolivas ' staircase scheduler, or Peter's own priority based scheduler.

mozilla.org today released upgrades to both Firefox 0.9 (0.9.1) and Thunderbird 0.7 (0.7.1) to fix some minor bugs present in both releases. Both releases correct some flaws in the extension system that some users may have been experiencing, as well as a new icon set for the navigation toolbar on Windows and Linux in Firefox 0.9.1. All users of both products should get this upgrade. Builds are available for Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7.1, as well as updated release notes (Fx, Tb) for both.

Although Linux & Open Source Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols once used IE on his Windows machines, he now finds Microsoft's browser seriously insecure and endorses open-source ones instead.

Intel's first chip that runs 32-bit and 64-bit software debuted in workstations on Monday, with the company promising a server version will arrive in two months.

By open-sourcing its next-generation Linux desktop technology, Sun Microsystems Inc. is turning over some of its most innovative work to date to the open-source community, sources said.

gLabels, a GNOME program that makes and prints all sorts of labels and business cards, seems to be capable of handling just about any task you throw at it. It's at release 1.93.3, a developer release on the way to a stable 2.0 version, but it's in very good shape.

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates has labeled bootlegged software a greater threat to his company than open-source programs.

Use of Linux by nonprofit organizations is nothing new. For one thing, the lower costs of Linux fit in well with limited budgets. Now, though, some end users at nonprofit organizations are choosing Linux for a completely different reason--namely, a better desktop experience than they've been getting from Windows.

In fact, one wonders whether there's been a skirmish at all. For more than two years, open-source advocates have been furiously throwing alternatives into the market to compete against the Windows/Office combo, with little or nothing to show for their efforts.

Nokia has updated a broad array of its tools and software developer's kits (SDKs) to support Eclipse, the popular Java-based open source Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Support for the Eclipse platform is included in new versions of the Nokia Developer's Suite for J2ME, version 2.2, and the Nokia Mobile Server Services SDK. In addition, users can now integrate any MIDP Nokia platform SDK into the Eclipse environment. All of these Nokia tools and SDKs are now available free of charge to members of Forum Nokia PRO, the advanced developer program offered by Nokia's developer relations group, Forum Nokia. They will be made available to the general Forum Nokia community next month.

Linux and Unix vendors are releasing fixes for a critical bug in the popular Web server Apache that could allow attackers to crash the system or execute malicious code. The bug affects Apache 1.3.x installations configured to act as proxy servers, which relay requests between a Web browser and the Internet. When a vulnerable server connects to a malicious site, a specially-crafted packet can be used to exploit the vulnerability, according to security researcher Georgi Guninski, who has publicly released exploit code.

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, seeking to stem the spread of Linux software, will meet with prime ministers in Australia and Malaysia and officials in China to promote its Windows operating system in Asia, the world's fastest-growing personal-computer market.

SlickEdit Inc. today announced the release of the SlickEdit(TM) Plug-in v9, the powerful editor plug-in that supports Eclipse 3.0. For over 15 years, power programmers from Fortune 500 companies to individuals have chosen SlickEdit products for their development tool of choice. SlickEdit Plug-in now allows Eclipse developers to write more code faster and more accurately.