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If you are a scientist and KDE user, you may already have been impressed by the range and quality of specialist software available for your use. But you may not be aware of the scientific graph plotting applications LabPlot (stable KDE 3 release with a KDE 4 version in progress) and SciDAVis (Qt4). The two projects have announced a collaboration to share common backend code to accelerate their development. We contacted the developers to get their take on their applications, the collaboration and the future of their projects. Read on to find out about the future of free software plotting.

In Part I of this OOXML update, my first post on the topic in over a year, I showed you how Microsoft maintains strong control over the OOXML standard. Despite their earlier promises that control of OOXML would be handed over to an independent, international committee, a look at attendance records reveals that the committee that maintains OOXML (JTC1/SC34/WG4) consists mainly of Microsoft employees, who outnumber any other company or organization on the committee 10-to-1.

When Cairo Dock v2.0 was out, it instantly became my favourite dock for Linux. Unfortunately, some Intel and ATI graphic card users were not able to run it in OpenGL mode (which is what's amazing about Cairo Dock). If you were among them, this is going to be great news for you: Cairo Dock in OpenGL mode now works with the very latest OpenSource drivers for ATI and Intel video card.

According to Harald Welte, the source code for the Palm Pre GSM model, currently being sold in Europe is now available from the opensource.palm.com site. Earlier this week, Welte pointed out that the source code for the new model of the Palm Pre was not available to the public, as it should be to comply with the terms of the GPL. An email to Welte from Palm has now confirmed the availability of the code for WebOS 1.1.2 and 1.1.3.

Cisco is keeping close tabs on the Asterisk open source IP PBX market. On the upside, Cisco spent time at Astricon promoting VoIP phones and other systems that link into Asterisk. But over time, Cisco will need to closely evaluate its Asterisk strategy. Here's why.

The Ubuntu 9.10 ("Karmic Koala") beta won a positive review from eWEEK, while InfoWorld reports on the server edition's capability for developing private clouds that are compatible with Amazon EC2. Meanwhile, ArsTechnica found the developer's version of Ubuntu Moblin Remix to be "promising" but "rough."

The Parsix Linux distribution is derived from KANOTIX, based on the Debian testing branch, and developed by a team in Iran. The distro comes as a live CD with English and Persian languages installed by default and many others available. According to the release announcement features of the new Parsix 3.0 include GNOME 2.26.3, Linux 2.6.29.6-based Kernel, the installer supports separate /home partition, ext4 file system and GRUB 2, SquashFS+Lzma compression for the live CD and much more. After seeing the amount of changes to this release and remembering positive reviews of Parsix 1.0 and 2.0, I burned the .ISO to CD and got started.

Next month will mark the two-year anniversary of the Unreal Tournament 3 release, but to this day the UT3 Linux client still has not been released. Up to this point we have been told by Ryan Gordon (the one porting over the game and engine to Linux) that it is still being worked on and Epic Games has similarly told us -- just two months ago -- that it is slowly being worked on. We've been told similar statements now going back many months that the Unreal Tournament 3 Linux client was still being worked on, but there was no ETA for when it might be released -- even though Ryan has been porting the game for over two years and originally he was hoping to ship the Linux client on the same-day as the game's release.

October 24th, 2009, will be Linux Day in Italy. You may think that such events are only relevant for software geeks, but that's not the case at all.

There are easy ways to manage Linux servers, and there are hard ways. Charlie Schluting shows how to go from hard to easy.

How do you make money from Linux in the cloud? One potential route could be to open a store. As part of its upcoming Karmic Koala release, Ubuntu Linux is set to integrate a number of new cloud technologies. One of the efforts will include a cloud software appliance store to help expedite setup and deployment of private clouds.

Why do we love Linux so much? What is it that draws so many of us into the tinkering, experimenting, and everything else? In the Linux world, we blur the line between applications software and the operating system. This is important. It allows us to have more flexibility than any other operating system on Earth.

Uruguay has become the first country to provide a laptop for every child attending state primary school. President Tabaré Vázquez presented the final XO model laptops to pupils at a school in Montevideo on 13 October. Over the last two years 362,000 pupils and 18,000 teachers have been involved in the scheme.

Last week, Munich saw the 2009 Edition of the Qt Developer Days. Qt Developer Days is a Qt-focused software conference which is held yearly in Europe and the U.S. The American edition will be held at the start of November in San Francisco. 700 attendants and more than 70 Trolls made this edition the biggest Developer Days to date. Qt Development Frameworks had invited a group of KDE developers to the conference, more well-known heads from the KDE world were sent by their respective employers. The days brought training sessions around Qt and many interesting presentations ranging from higher level topics such as the future roadmap for Qt to topics related to Qt programming with techniques and technologies such as the Model/View Framework, QGraphicsView, WebKit, multithreading and many more. Read on for a more detailed report of what has been revealed and talked about during the three-day conference in Munich's Hilton Park hotel.

While the European Linux scene has been busy with KDE and Qt, a relatively unnoticed but important gathering occurred in the U.S. to determine the future of the GNOME desktop: the GNOME Boston Summit 2009.

I have used Linux for many years. I use it on extremely fast machines and on some really slow ones. I am always encouraged when I test out a new release and find that it works on my older and much slower equipment. Puppy Linux 4.3 is just that. A stable Linux distribution that has all the tools to get that older machine running.

Mayank looks forward to a time when he can dirty his hands by getting under the hood of any device in his living room.

We are now well in the middle of October and this means it’s our usual time of celebration at OpenOffice.org . OpenOffice.org is now 9 years old, which is no small accomplishment for a Free Software project.

I wasn't quite happy with the current selection of gnome themes so I decided to learn how to create my own themes. In learning how to create themes I also learned how to port themes from WindowBlinds skins to GTK/Metacity. This meant that I could port all of my favorite WindowBlinds skins to the GNOME desktop. I'd like to show you some of the themes that I have recently ported.

Although the 8th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) isn't until February, 2010, a Call for Papers has already been announced. If you've got something you want to discuss with the FOSS community, head over to the registration page and submit your idea for a talk. There are five speaker tracks to choose from including two specialized tracks -- one for beginners and one for developers. I caught up with SCALE Publicity Chair Orv Beach, to get the inside scoop on what makes a successful presentation, what the review committee is looking for (hint: it's not Big Names in FOSS), and more.