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As the Debian project releases a second update of its Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 ("Lenny") distribution, a controversy has broken out over the next version, "Squeeze." GNU guru Richard Stallman has warned that by including a Mono-based note-taking application called Tomboy, Debian runs the risk of Microsoft litigation over C# patents. Debian forms the basis for a number of desktop and embedded Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Xandros. The second stable release, made available this week, is said to include numerous security fixes, as well as "a few adjustments to serious problems." But, the upcoming Squeeze release appears to have some serious problems, according to Debian insiders.

In total, PostgreSQL 8.4 includes 293 enhancements from the previous 8.3 release, an update that was primarily centered around performance. "There is no performance change [that] affects all users equally across the board," PostgreSQL project core team member Josh Berkus told InternetNews.com. "However, there are several changes with dramatically improve performance for several specific common use cases."

In many parts of the world, the power grid is shoddy, computers are scarce, and connectivity is even rarer. Thus, as with many other modern practices and technologies, populations are increasingly bifurcated into the "computing haves" and the "computing have-nots." But many are addressing the divide. SolarNetOne is a turnkey Internet hotspot—power, computers, and satellite uplink—you can install virtually anywhere, for less than the cost of a subcompact car.

The PostgreSQL developers have released version 8.4 of the open source database saying it is "Now easier to use than ever". The release, which comes after sixteen months of development by the PostgeSQL Global Development Group, adds a number of new features such as per-column permissions which gives more control over which users can see which columns in a database.

The Triple Crown of Linux conferences — if there is one — is surely the Linux Symposium, the Linux Kongress, and linux.conf.au. It was just a month ago that we passed on the message to LinuxJournal.com readers that the time to get their name on the Kongress program was nigh, and now it is time to do the same for the southernmost jewel in the crown.

In June of 2007, after many months delay, the Free Software Software Foundation released GPLv3. Since that time, the license has been gaining an increased following, but without much threat to GPLv2 in first place.

Canonical has launched Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services, an effort to help customers build and support cloud infrastructures that live behind corporate firewalls. The announcement, leveraging Ubuntu Server Edition, caught The VAR Guy’s attention for two key reasons.

"What ever happened to chunkfs?" This is a question I hear every few months, and I always answer the same way, "Chunkfs works, the overhead is reasonable, and it is only practical if it is part of the file system design from the beginning, not tacked on after the fact. I just need to write up the paper summarizing all the data." Thanks to your benevolent LWN editor, you are now reading that paper.

Does the idea of "advocacy" make you nervous? It does sound a bit scary, doesn't it, like those annoying door-to-door religious people. But it's not that way. If you're interested in helping people learn to speak Linux, here are a few easy, non-scary tips.

Red Hat today officially announced the beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (RHEL), which in my view is a lot more than a typical point release. Sure we're all waiting for the big RHEL 6 release, but there are some major changes in RHEL 5.4.

Less than 24 hours since it was released, Firefox 3.5 has already been downloaded more than four million times. According to Mozilla's Worldwide Firefox Downloads page, the major update to the open source Firefox web browser is currently being downloaded approximately 77 times every second all around the globe.

FrostWire is an open-source, free Java-based peer-to-peer client with support for the BitTorrent protocol, skins and iTunes. The latest release, 4.18.0, contains many improvements, bug fixes and several changes. See the official announcement here. Debian Lenny doesn't come with FrostWire included in its repositories, but installing it is very easy if you follow the steps below.

Next week, I'm taking part in a debate with a Microsoft representative about the passage of the OOXML file format through the ISO process last year. Since said Microsoftie can draw on the not inconsiderable resources of his organisation to provide him with a little back-up, I thought I'd try to even the odds by putting out a call for help to the unmatched resource that is the Linux Journal community. Here's the background to the meeting, and the kind of info I hope people might be able to provide.

Since the torrents of IANALs have been filling the Internet tubes with passionate arguments on Mono/No Mono, it seemed a good time to weigh in with an article written by an actual lawyer on the possible risks and dangers. "Without that explicit patent license, we certainly should prefer the community-driven and Free-Software-developed languages over those developed by companies (like Microsoft) that have a history of anti-Free Software practices."

Firefox 3.5 has been released and is available for download, the new version is faster than ever and come with many new features. This how to shows you how to upgrade from firefox3.x to firefox3.5

This article continues the series of articles on Fireall Builder, a graphical firewall configuration and management tool that supports many Open Source firewall platforms as well as Cisco IOS access lists and Cisco ASA (PIX). This article demonstrates how you can work with IP Service object in Firewall Builder.

Krusader is a twin-panel file manager for KDE which has been around for around seven years and was always a good alternative to Konqueror since KDE3 days. Its interface resembles the one of the popular file manager Midnight Commander for the console. Codenamed 'Mars Pathfinder', 2.0 is the first KDE4 stable release, bringing lots of new features and coming with the entire interface ported to Qt4 libraries.

A potential Oracle-Ubuntu partnership gets a little sexier when you throw OpenOffice into the mix. Here's why according to The VAR Guy.

Last week I made a summary of the current state of the Linux netbook market. Today I will show you that Linux netbooks are at a crossroad. They can reach a bright future and a significant market presence through 3 different paths: the smartbook path, the cheap path and the power path. I will explain how each path will lead the Linux netbook to market dominance in a specific niche.

For those of you using PHP in the development of web-sites or even on the desktop (like what we do with the Phoronix Test Suite), PHP 5.3.0 has finally been released! This major update to PHP5 brings support for namespaces, late static bindings, closures, new PHP extensions, plenty of bug fixes, and much more.