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Does the troll-blocking organization that recently secured a set of supposedly Linux-related patents from Microsoft need sizing for a penguin-shaped tinfoil hat? Or was the IP sale really Redmond's secret scheme to "create fear, uncertainty, and doubt" in the open-source community?

Cherokee is a very fast, flexible and easy to configure Web Server. It supports the widespread technologies nowadays: FastCGI, SCGI, PHP, CGI, TLS and SSL encrypted connections, virtual hosts, authentication, on the fly encoding, load balancing, Apache compatible log files, and much more. This tutorial shows how you can install Cherokee on a Debian Lenny server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 1.8.6 for Linux today. Bordeaux 1.8.6 fixes a install bug. If you have had problems with Bordeaux 1.8.x not installing a application we recommend you update to 1.8.6 and the problem should now be resolved.

Larry Ellison claims the European Commission investigation into his proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems is costing him $100m a month. Coincidentally that is exactly how much Ellison spends on scented candles to keep his fleet of fighter aircraft smelling fragrant. The Oracle boss accepted that European regulators have a job to do but said the longer it takes the more money Sun was losing. Competition Commissioner 'Steelie' Neelie Kroes announced a phase-two investigation into the $7.4bn deal earlier this month. She is particularly concerned by the fate of open source database MySQL which is seen as a future competitor to Oracle's core business

Just about a week after X Server 1.7 RC1 made it out, a second release candidate for this next X.Org Server is available. This second release candidate brings bug fixes and other improvements, but the code is currently within a feature freeze...

Earlier this month at the Red Hat Summit where Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 was released with support for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine. At this Red Hat event, virtualization -- particularly KVM -- and cloud computing were the most talked about topics. But how is KVM performing these days? With new virtualization refinements going into almost every new Linux kernel release, we have published a new set of KVM benchmarks using the Linux 2.6.31 kernel, to provide updated numbers against our KVM benchmarks from last year and our Core i7 virtualization numbers. This time around, we are also using a Phenom II processor for testing out the AMD-V technology.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds says the open source kernel has become "bloated and huge," with no midriff-slimming diet plan in sight. During a roundtable discussion at LinuxCon in Portland, Oregon this afternoon, moderator and Novell distinguished engineer James Bottomley asked Tovalds whether Linux kernel features were being released too fast, before the kernel is stabilized. Citing an internal Intel study that tracked kernel releases, Bottomley said Linux performance had dropped about two per centage points at every release, for a cumulative drop of about 12 per cent over the last ten releases. "Is this a problem?" he asked. "We're getting bloated and huge. Yes, it's a problem," said Torvalds.

What is the future of the Linux desktop? According to Bob Sutor, vice president of open source and Linux at IBM (NYSE: IBM), it's not about dominating the desktop landscape or being a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Windows. In fact, during his keynote at the LinuxCon conference today, Sutor said he doesn't see Linux ever dominating the desktop space. "I think trying to make it a complete drop-in replacement is a dead-end strategy," Sutor said. "They've got a little bit more money, and even more important than that is they've got the market share and the mind share."

The Linux platform is an emerging market with a lot of growth potential. Software companies should definitely get on board to get an competitive advantage.

WorksWithU sat down with Canonical’s John Pugh to discuss his Ubuntu Server Edition 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) priorities, ISV (independent software vendor) relationships and Ubuntu cloud initiatives. Here's a recap of the discussion.

IBM says that battling for desktop market share against Windows is a "dead-end" for Linux. Bob Sutor, IBM's vp of open source and Linux for IBM, opened the inaugural LinuxCon conference held in Portland, Oregon on Monday with predictions for the open source desktop, telling developers they won't thrive unless they specialize. Given his connections to Big Blue, Sutor unsurprisingly (and justifiably) praised Linux for its cloud, mainframe, and hardware-specific ubiquity. But he opined that winning hearts in the general market is a different story altogether.

LXer Feature: 21-Sept-2009

The founder of Linux distie Ubuntu has outlined plans for the platform’s next release (10.04), which is expected to land in April 2010. Mark Shuttleworth said in a video message to attendees of the open source outfit’s UbuCon Atlanta meeting yesterday, that the next version of the distribution carries the code name Lucid Lynx.

When Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison hosted a webcast last week to unveil the next generation of his company's Exadata appliance, a label reading "Oracle-Sun" was prominently displayed on the high-end database and storage system. Analysts said the arrival of the jointly built package shows that engineers at Oracle and Sun Microsystems Inc. have started working together in advance of the closing of Oracle's $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun, now expected in January.

Malware developers are going open source in an effort to make their malicious software more useful to fraudsters. By giving criminal coders free access to malware that steals financial and personal details, the malicious software developers are hoping to expand the capabilities of old Trojans. According to Candid Wuest, threat researcher with security firm Symantec, around 10 percent of the Trojan market is now open source.

Like the bad actor in a Victorian melodrama, SCO refuses to lie down, and keeps coming back for more.

Cloud computing is a relativity new computing concept where resources are provided via the Internet instead of on the local computer or network. It's virtualization over the Internet. Eric Geier introduces eyeOS, the do-it-yourself cloud that keeps control in your hands.

Gnome Shell consists of two big parts: the panel and overlay. The panel part is pretty much obvious - system tray, user name, and clock stuff and the activities button which activates the overlay -, and about the "overlay", well, take a look at this screenshot: Basically, it allows the user to concentrate on switching to a new activity by opening new applications, documents, or both. It displays all the current user workspaces and open windows and facilitates organizing them. So far, the Gnome Shell installation was quite time-consuming, so most people didn't try it until now. With time, however, this has changed, and you can install it by running a script. Here is how:

One of the things I love about GNU/Linux is the existence of LiveCD's. A live CD or live DVD is a CD or DVD containing a bootable computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking mutable secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive. Live USB flash drives are similar to live CDs, but often have the added functionality of automatically and transparently writing changes back to their bootable medium.

As far as the Lynx part goes, Shuttleworth noted that the Lynx is a predator but it's a very thoughtful and considered predator that is focused on finding the right target opportunity at the right time. So what about the smell part? That's where some Shuttleworth humor comes into play. "Lynx is also well known as a global brand of deodorant so this years' Ubuntu developer summit is going to be the sweetest smelling Ubuntu developer summit ever," Shuttleworth said.