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The SA State IT Agency's Free and Open Source Programme Office (FPO) is to host a workshop this coming Friday in which free and open source software (FOSS) vendors will have a chance to demonstrate their products to government officials. The day-long workshop will include representatives from companies that were selected, in a 2005 tender process, as government-approved open source vendors.

I took a Computer Logic Design class in college, so when I stumbled upon the Ksimus Circuit Simulator, I was intrigued. At the risk of waxing nostalgic, I remember what it was like to build circuits in school. We'd spend hours the night before the lab designing our circuit, being careful to list each interconnection. We had to keep track of which pin numbers on each chip were to be connected.

A year ago, when a Time Magazine reporter told Tan Dailin that he'd been identified as someone who may have hacked the Pentagon, he gasped and asked, "Will the FBI send special agents out to arrest me?" The answer, it turns out, was, "No, the Chinese government will." Dailin, better known in Chinese hacker circles as Withered Rose, was reportedly picked up last month in Chengdu, China, by local authorities. He is now facing seven years in prison under a new Chinese cybercrime law that was passed in late February.

I ran into an odd gedit bug on various versions of Ubuntu and Kubuntu; it won't save to an SSHFS mount and says it's a permissions error. But the error message is in error, because it isn't a permisssions error. But before we get to that, here is a quick SSHFS howto. I use SSHFS all the time because it is a great fast way to securely mount a remote directory locally.

Tired of Arial and Verdana? Add some sizzle to your Web pages with a new open source project that can render any font in a page. (Flash not required.)

When Microsoft filed its lawsuit against TomTom, it named two patents which cover the VFAT filesystem. That, naturally, led to a renewed push to either (1) get those patents invalidated, or (2) move away from VFAT altogether. But some participants have advocated a third approach: find a way to work around the patents which retains most of the VFAT filesystem functionality while, with luck, avoiding any potential infringement of the claims of the patent. But, as a recently-posted patch and the ensuing discussion show, workarounds are not a straightforward solution even after the lawyers have been satisfied.

Red Hat has announced their latest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, version 4.8. This is the 8th major update to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 OS.

"Whoever has physical access to the machine owns it" is an old and true Unix saying. Still, there are some steps you can take to add extra security to your Linux box, such as password-protecting the boot process. Juliet Kemp shows how.

I've been wondering about what ever happened to these Windows XP-based OLPC trials. I haven't really heard anything about them in quite some time. Now more recently I've asked around and found there is a good reason why I haven't seen anything: countries are choosing Sugar over Windows XP for their XO deployments. Apparently the conversations are going pretty much as many of us had expected: Initially country representatives inquire if Windows XP runs on the XO laptop. That doesn't really come as a surprise - for many people Windows is the definition of a computer. However, upon further investigation every country decided to stick to Sugar.

Have Ubuntu Intrepid Server dual boot with Jaunty just to perform Xen build properly and remove afterwards . It’s needed due to issues with python setup on Ubuntu Jaunty Server. We would build Xen 3.4 from source on Ubuntu 8.10 server and perform install via “make dist and install.sh to remote instance”. I believe procedure bellow will run same way with Ubuntu Jaunty root file system mounted as NFS share on Intrepid Server.

Download, install and go to work in less than an hour.

I stumbled onto this blog post earlier today — from dkpw’s Wikedfire — explaining how you can potentially install Novell’s GroupWise on Ubuntu. Novell doesn’t support GroupWise on Ubuntu. So, do dkpw’s step-by-step directions work? I must concede: I haven’t tried the install. But the mere mention of Novell GroupWise and Canonical’s Ubuntu in the same sentence raises some interesting considerations. Here's some perspective.

Last year, when I was socializing the idea of creating the OASIS ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC, I gave a presentation I called "ODF Interoperability: The Price of Success". The observation was that standards that fail never need to deal with interoperability. The creation of test suites, convening of multi-vendor interoperability workshops and plugfests is a sign of a successful standard, one which is implemented by many vendors, one which is adopted by many users, one which has vendor-neutral venues for testing implementations and iteratively refining the standard itself.

This guide explains how you can install and use KVM for creating and running virtual machines on an Ubuntu 9.04 server. I will show how to create image-based virtual machines and also virtual machines that use a logical volume (LVM). KVM is short for Kernel-based Virtual Machine and makes use of hardware virtualization, i.e., you need a CPU that supports hardware virtualization, e.g. Intel VT or AMD-V.

Everybody loves the wild and wacky names that end up gracing releases of the various Linux distributions throughout the year, even if some of them — we're not going to name names, that might hurt our karma — have gotten a bit more bizarre of late. Among the more interesting processes for picking release names comes from the Fedora Project, where unlike most other distributions, the new name must share a unique link to its predecessor. Its time then to put your thinking caps on, as the race to make that most creative of links is underway.

Strange but true, usually the best of enemies it would seem that Microsoft and the Linux Foundation are in full agreement over something for a change. What is more, they are working together in order to find a solution as well.

Microsoft and their attendant band of astroturf bloggers are already raising a hue and cry over Rob's findings, claiming the ODF standard itself is at fault, and in some cases calling for his resignation as chair of the ODF Technical Committee for the heinous sin of pointing out this emperor has no clothes.

At first glance, emerging software companies like Level Platforms and Canonical have little in common. The former develops managed services software; the latter promotes the Ubuntu Linux distribution. But take a closer look and you’ll find Level Platforms and Canonical heading in somewhat similar cloud directions. Here's the scoop.

The Netherlands in Open Connection and OpenDoc Society are happy to announce the immediate availability of the beta of Officeshots.org, a free webservice that allows users to compare the output quality of office applications. The Officeshots project entails both an open source service framework, and a free online service based on this framework. The service is now in closed beta, exclusively available to members of the international OpenDoc Society on http://www.officeshots.org. If you wish to join the beta program you can become a member or sponsor of the OpenDoc Society. Officeshots will be put to the test significantly in the first ODF Plugfest that will be held June 15/16th 2009 in The Royal Library in The Hague.

LXer Feature: 19-May-2009

Most Linux adepts will agree Linux could have a higher market share than it does today, if it had been marketed more effectively in the past. Therefore, lots of those adepts stress “Linux needs more marketing!” Some efforts have been done, most notably I remember the Indy 500 car which advertised Linux, and more recently the "We're Linux" Video Contest by Linux Foundation. One question hasn't been answered as of yet however: What's the goal of marketing Linux?