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A few days ago I received the latest issue of Linux Journal Magazine. I must admit that one of the sections I look forward to reading is diff -u. This section summarizes the latest updates and discussions of the Linux kernel development community. It becomes much easier to read a summary as opposed to signing up for the mailing list because you will just get bombarded with e-mails which can be overwhelming the majority of the time. While reading I came across a Montavista developed project called pramfs. In summary pramfs is a non-volatile RAM based file system, similar to your ramfs and tmpfs with a few differences to distinguish it from the others and in turn adapted for an embedded environment. Two obvious differences are that it is persistent like a traditional disk-based file system and does not reside in volatile DRAM. Pramfs is not new. It was originally announced back in 2004. It is designed to be a simplified file system that does not carry the same weight of the journal-based file systems.

This is a response on an article at my neighbor site: http://www.nintenlord.com/x/?page_id=405. This time, it is not Pro Linux, but Con Linux. I agree with David's article, but many people do not. So I'd like to sum up what most people walk into when trying Linux. Note: This is written out of the viewpoint of a regular user that wants to try Linux. Not from "our" viewpoints. These are the points most people complain about. Agree with it or not, it is the reality. (At least, for a lot of people). 1. The most Linux distro’s are free of charge (and good). Also, the most Linux software are free of charge (and good). And there are lots of them! So, enough choice. For every Windows software are most likely different Linux alternatives.

Red Hat has filed an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court. In the brief, Red Hat explains the practical problems of software patents to software developers.

This document describes how to install the Internet Explorer (IE) 6 or 7 or both on Fedora 10 or 11 using IEs4Linux package. Some Web developers and designers (and rarely users) need to view their pages on IE for testing purpose (and see how CSS / JavaScript behaves).

Consider the following scenario: mindSHIFT, a Microsoft Gold Partner, is pretty excited about Windows 7’s scheduled Oct. 22 launch. Yet mindSHIFT also is launching a cloud service that blends hosted Windows desktops with open source applications like OpenOffice. This is the start of a bigger trend. Here's why.

Forget the netbook or the net-top PC. How about a tiny net-server that fits in the palm of your hand and sells for $600? A Japanese vendor is touting a lilliputian Linux Web server that weighs 8 ounces and consumes just 8 watts. At 5.2-inches-by-3.1-inches in size -- and 1.2 inches thick -- the OpenBlockS 600 is about the size of two cigarette packs side-by-side. For non-smokers, that's two iPhones stacked on top of each other.

A UK-based systems integrator, has completed its first ever Skype for Asterisk enterprise deployment. Is this the start of a larger trend involving Asterisk and open source IP PBXes? You’re about to find out.

Paris-based OW2 Consortium, whose members include Alcatel Lucent, France Telecom, Red Hat and Thales, will merge with California-based Open Solutions Alliance, which represents organizations including Unisys and Ingres.

Most often we are faced with testing out the latest motherboards, processors, and graphics cards to see how well they work with Linux under different conditions and a variety of tests. While those are obviously the components that most Linux users are concerned with when it comes to Linux compatibility and performance, plenty of peripherals to this day don't work under Linux or will only do so to a limited extent or after jumping through various hurdles to get a half-working device. With mice for instance, they generally will work fine when plugged into any modern desktop Linux distribution, but with some of the gaming and high-end input devices not all of the buttons will be detected or other features will not work. When a company came along that we never heard of, Mionix, claiming to offer some of the best gaming products, curiosity got the best of us and we decided to see how well the Saiph 3200 from this unheard of company would work on the Linux desktop.

This has been of particular help to the 30 or so children with severe learning difficulties, says Elias Portugal, a special-needs teacher at the school. Before, he struggled to give them individual attention. Now, the laptops are helping them with basic language skills. "The machines capture the kids' attention. They can type a word and the computer pronounces it," he says.Nearly all of Uruguay's 380,000 primary-school pupils have now received a simple and cheap XO laptop, a model developed by One Laptop Per Child, an NGO based in Massachusetts. The government hopes this will help poorer and disadvantaged children do better in school while also improving the overall standard of education. These ambitions will be tested for the first time later this month when every Uruguayan seven-year-old will take online exams in a range of academic subjects.

Rory Cellan-Jones visits a school in Kigali where children are using computers supplied by the One Laptop Per Child project.... They are loaded with software designed to limit energy use so that they can be used for many hours without requiring their batteries to be recharged. They can also link to one another via wi-fi to form a network that connects to a distant internet link. This video was filmed on a mobile phone.

At the end of her term, competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes is wrapping up two open cases against Microsoft... FSFE is involved in both. We are concerned that the Commission may end up reversing years of successful antitrust work if Neelie Kroes settles for far too little in order to close a deal, any deal... So far, Microsoft is only offering the interoperability information on what is falsely labeled as "reasonable and non-discriminatory" (RAND) terms. From our perspective, such terms are both unreasonable and discriminatory, because they make it impossible to use the interoperability information in Free Software.

Sdenka Salas, a teacher who is working with Andean children from Aymara and Quechua communities, wrote a book in April about using Sugar in the classroom. She recently completed the English-language version. She has kindly made it available for download.

I'm a big proponent of the long-term-release concept in operating systems because I think both the enterprise and the home user doesn't want things breaking and should have the option of sticking with a particular distribution longer than 6 or 12 months. And I stuck with the current long-term release of Ubuntu — 8.04 — for well over a year because it worked fairly well with the particular hardware I'm using. But often a new release can clear up problems and be more stable than the perceived "stable" release.

The Amarok team is excited to announce the release of Amarok 2.2. In three and a half months, Amarok has made a huge leap forward, gaining many new features and a lot of old features from 1.4 have returned. Amarok 2.2 brings back support for sorting and shuffling the playlist, for an external MySQL database as well as for playing audio CDs to name a few. It brings a new video and photo applet to show media related to the current song. The layout can be modified to suit your needs thanks to dock widgets and the sidebar has been changed to be easier to navigate with bread crumbs.

T-DOSE is a free and yearly event held in The Netherlands to promote use and development of Open Source Software. During this event Open Source projects, developers and visitors can exchange ideas and knowledge. This years event will be held on 3 and 4 October 2009 at the Fontys University of Applied Science in Eindhoven.

Canonical is preparing to raise the storage limit on Ubuntu One, based on beta tester feedback from those who are using the online storage system. Longer term, Canonical also is listening closely to user feedback requesting Ubuntu One support for Windows, Mac OS X and Apple iPhones. Here’s the update.

There has been some discussion recently about Mark Shuttleworth’s keynote at LinuxCon, in particular a comment he made in passing about the need to explain to “girls” about free software. I haven’t had much time for writing since then, but a few people have asked me what I thought about it, so I thought I should say something.

There's a weird consistency with which the most publicly vocal partisans of the position that Microsoft is an wholly owned subsidiary of Hell also seem to regularly express the opinion that there's really no problem, or at least no problem worth talking about, with women in the open source software community.

Mark Shuttleworth delivered the closing keynote at this year's inaugural Linuxcon. He delivered an enticing vision of the future of Linux and Free software, with a catch-- it means breaking drastically from the old ways. Carla Schroder reports on the highlights of his keynote, and readers can view the keynote as well.