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SugarCRM is the latest open source application provider to jump into Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud. SugarCRM’s move reinforce’s Microsoft’s commitment to make Azure a widely supported cloud -- including both open and closed source application partners. Here's the scoop.

The Linux Mint team has announced the first (RC1) release candidate of the Ubuntu 9.10-based Linux Mint 8. Meanwhile, the Fedora community has released the final version of Fedora 12, and an eWEEK review praises the release for its improved system privilege management and virtualization features.

While the latest installment of the Red Hat-sponsored community Linux distribution offers many new features, at the top of the list for users including Fedora's project leader, Paul Frields, are improved networking capabilities that raise the bar for mobile connectivity on Linux. "The features that I feel closest to this time, and that have affected me, are the network manager improvements in mobile broadband, which are pretty extensive," Frields told InternetNews.com. "Not only do we have a provider database that makes it easy to tether your phone to your laptop and get online, but also we've got functions to allow use of newer EVDO cards and mobile USB interfaces that are out there."

Sometimes, performing systems administration is comparable to learning similar languages. For example, if you have studied one of the Romance languages like French or Italian, you tend to recognize words in Spanish or Romanian with a fair degree of accuracy. The same is true for UNIX and Linux. There are enough commonalities between these various operating systems that major concepts traverse them but enough dissimilarity to make systems administration a challenge if all you have is the root password.

In simple terms, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) represents the way an organisation keeps track with its existing and potential future customers. CRM software offers the means to support these processes. This type of software stores information about customers. But its functionality far extends that of say a traditional database. It also allows companies to measure and control contacts with customers, to provide the flexibility to get the right information to the right individual at the right time.

The typical BeOS like look has been improved with changes to Deskbar, icon theme and GTK+ theme. Disk Manager now supports auto-detection of BFS (BeOS) partitions and allows to mount them. ZevenOS 2.0 brings big changes like a completely new audio subsystem (PulseAudio), switch from HAL to DeviceKit, MagiKit - a standard application management layer, Remaster-Kit for easy ISO re-mastering, Encode and Super Encode - an all-in-one multimedia converting application, MAGI 2 - an application launcher, installer and configuration center. Screenshots at SEO Expert Consultants

Addonics announced a low-cost, six-ounce network-attached storage (NAS) device for the SOHO market. The Linux-based Addonics Mini NAS offers a single 2.5-inch storage bay, an Ethernet port, a USB port, and multiple servers, including UPnP, and supports both SMB and open source Samba network protocols, says the company.

The Internet and Google have made FOSS developers lazy because they have made it too easy to abdicate the job of proper documentation to "The community." Telling users and potential contributors to use Google, mailing lists, and forums is not documentation. It's a way to guarantee having fewer users, unhappy users, and fewer contributors.

According to a current Gartner study, Windows Mobile has lost 28% of the mobile market share over the last year. Winners at first are Apple and Blackberry, but open source systems are gaining over the long run.

The truth about Linux today is that one may never have to actually touch a terminal or issue a single Linux command in order to run some versions of this flexible alternative operating system. While there are times when using the Linux command line could be expeditious and the benefits of possessing the ability to use it are numerous, many users can be intimidated by the prospect. They may think it’s too difficult or too much to remember. But once a user becomes accustomed to using the command line interface, it soon becomes the preferred method in many tasks. Not only is it much quicker to accomplish just about any given task at the command line, it opens a whole new world of possibilities. It allows the user to begin to understand how an operating system is structured and functions. It gives the user very powerful tools to do the things graphical interfaces will never be able to reproduce. And best of all, it’s just fun.

Based on Opensuse11.2 , the new openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e includes carefully selected softwares for students, educators as well as parents. The software selection encompasses everything required to make computers productive for either home or educational use.

One of my favourite sites for anyone benighted enough to believe that Windows is in any sense superior technology to free software is Top500. As its name hints, this is simply the top 500 supercomputers in the world, with an analysis by location, vendors, processor architecture – and, of course, operating systems.

Representatives from three European member states, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, took part in the second Open Document Format (ODF) interoperability workshop held in the Italian town of Orvieto at the beginning of this month.

I've started to wonder if Novell or IBM has explained to SCO's Chapter 11 Trustee Edward Cahn how the GPL works. It cuts through all the other ways SCO is bound to lose, in my view. Then, I thought: why not just explain it myself? You never know. It might prove useful to put it all in one place. So, here goes, SCO and the GPL. As you may recall, if you've been around since 2003, SCO's position on the GPL has been that while it may have distributed its code under the GPL, it didn't mean to do it, that it never knowingly distributed Unix or Unixware code under the GPL. I'd like to briefly explain why that excuse doesn't matter to either Novell or IBM. IBM of course has always taken the position that it hasn't infringed any copyrights, no matter who owns them. But let's take SCO's words at face value, and pretend that they are true. Then how does the GPL moot their claims?

Microsoft has presented version 4.0 of its .NET Micro Framework at the Professional Developer Conference (PDC). The framework is being released as open source software under the Apache 2.0 licence. .NET Micro Framework, an offshoot of the standard .NET Framework, should allow developers to use .NET and Visual Studio as options for the development of applications for devices with limited memory and processing power, such as set-top boxes and car entertainment systems.

The Petaflop pioneer Roadrunner has been relegated to second place after the 225,000 processor cores of the Jaguar XT5. Europe's largest supercomputer, Bluegene/P, has meanwhile slipped in the ranks.

Over the next ten years, tens, and possibly hundreds of millions, of new platforms are going to be put into place in the United States as part of a new national infrastructure; an equal number will be installed in Europe (many are already being installed). The same may happen in other parts of the world as well.

Last Friday during the Gallium3D workshop we learned that the Tungsten Graphics developers that were bought out by VMware have been working on a virtual Gallium3D driver that would be used by guest operating systems running within VMware's virtualization platform. This is especially interesting considering that it will allow virtualized guests to have accelerated access to X11, OpenGL, OpenCL, X-Video, XvMC, and all sorts of other possibilities that's just limited by what's supported by the available state trackers.

Raleigh, NC - November 17, 2009 - The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today announced the availability of Fedora 12, the latest version of its free open source operating system distribution. Fedora 12 includes a robust feature set for desktop users, administrators, developers and open source enthusiasts alike. New enhancements available in Fedora 12 include next-generation Ogg Theora video, virtualization improvements and advancements to NetworkManager, among numerous others.

Over the course of the last month or so, your editor has been to six conferences on three continents. When engaged in that kind of travel, it is, of course, obligatory to determine which country has the best beer; normally, substantial amounts of research are required. It's also normal to hear what's on one's co-researchers' minds while carrying out this task. This time around, your editor heard grumbles from a surprising number of people, all about the same topic: copyright assignment policies. In particular, developers are concerned and unhappy about the copyright assignment policy that Canonical has chosen for all of its projects. This agreement [PDF] is a relatively simple read; it fits on a single page. It applies to a long list of projects, including Bazaar, Launchpad, Quickly, Upstart, and Notify-osd; contributions to any of those projects must be made under the terms of this agreement.