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Despite a national open source strategy and a well-publicised set of minimum interoperability standards for government, the South African education department has launched a teacher laptop project that excludes free and open source software (FOSS).

This tutorial shows how to set up a Mandriva 2009.1 Free (x86_64) server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. In the end you should have a system that works reliably, and if you like you can install the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig 2 (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box). This tutorial is written for the 64-bit version of Mandriva 2009.1.

I've recently made the switch to the command line, and I'm going to make a series of tutorials for the apps I use. In this part I'll cover the basics of Elinks and Moc. In the viewpoint of a regular user like me.

The latest Firefox may still be in beta but it boasts a number of behind-the-scenes features that will make developing for the web easier as well as end-user changes that add new functionality, like private browsing and support for drag and drop.

Canonical has begun beta testing a managed storage service — known as Ubuntu One (pictured) — that allows Ubuntu 9.04 users to share and sync files between multiple Ubuntu PCs. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

The companies that create and modernize operating systems are under the same economic pressures as the IT departments of corporations - large and small - that create and maintain their own applications atop those operating systems. And it comes as no surprise that the development of the venerable OpenVMS proprietary operating system - under the control of Hewlett-Packard since its 2001 acquisition of Compaq - is moving largely to India. The news of the changes in the OpenVMS development organization came to light when Ann McQuaid, general manager of the OpenVMS platform, sent out a letter to AlphaServer and Integrity shops that have applications running on OpenVMS.

Today, we at Qt Software have opened our repositories to the public. Any developer can now help guide and shape the future development of Qt by contributions of code, translations, examples and other material to Qt and Qt-related projects. We have also published our roadmap and released Qt Jambi under the LGPL. Read on for details.

Announcing the release of AVG 8.5 for Linux, AVG says the solution is available in both server and free workstation editions, and offers “streamlined scanning capabilities, new anti-virus filtering and improved performance and ease of use for Linux-based users.” AVG Australia’s Lloyd Borrett says AVG Server Edition 8.5 for Linux/Free BSD provides protection for both e-mail and file servers in a single distribution package, and is robust enough to support millions of e-mails a day, and is suitable for use even by large enterprises and ISPs.

Microsoft Corp., for the first time in the company's history, sold bonds to investors, capitalizing on its sterling credit rating and investor appetite to raise $3.75 billion. The software giant Monday was able to sell bonds at interest rates that were only a slight premium to U.S. government debt and at much lower rates than other corporations. The move sparked speculation that the Redmond, Wash., giant could be planning to use the money for an acquisition as it seeks to revive growth. But people familiar with the matter said the company doesn't have a specific deal in mind for the cash, moving instead to take advantage of market conditions. Analysts predicted Microsoft is more likely to use the funds to continue to buy back its stock, which has fallen more than 30% over the past year.

According to Dell's Ubuntu page in recent months, the number of machines that Dell has offered in the UK with Ubuntu Linux instead of Microsoft Windows has dwindled from three (a netbook, laptop and desktop) to, apparently, none. Meanwhile the news from Dell US is that there is a new version of Ubuntu coming for the Dell Mini 10 netbook.

This week we have more straight reporting from Studio Dave with a look at some conference activity, cool developments in the world of Ardour and news about some new and updated programs for your complete Linux music production studio.

"I would like to make a case for asserting that what we usually refer to as "Linux" (or "GNU/Linux" regardless) is not really an operating system. In fact I believe that referring to it as such and spending money and effort on marketing it as such is actually doing "it" a disservice, if that's even possible."

Back in March we witnessed the release of Qt 4.5 which was also met by an announcement that Qt Extended was to be discontinued and that was just weeks after the announcement came down that Qt Jambi would be discontinued. There have certainly been many changes since Nokia bought out Trolltech and then renamed it to Qt Software...

Despite being overshadowed by the popularity of Ubuntu in recent years, SimplyMepis is still one of the most friendly desktop distributions in the Linux landscape. Installation is easy, as most Linuxes are these days, but that's only the first step. Susan Linton reports on how SimplyMepis performs over the long run.

In Burning the Ships, an open letter from then-20-year-old Bill Gates, written in 1976, is cited. In that letter, Gates says To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software. He is talking about computer software in what was then a burgeoning computer industry, run mainly as a hobby. He goes on to say that the prevailing assumption that hardware must be paid for but software is something to share is not a model for the successful creation of quality hardware. As the Open Source community has proven, his statements are not quite validated, but I am not opposed to developers making money for their code. At the beginning of this year, several people at Linux Journal and elsewhere, took a pledge to be DRM free.

Market share, market share, what's Linux's true market share? That, in essence, has been the question du jour on the Linux blogs in recent days. It all started when NetApplications' Hitslink.com released some statistics for April indicating that Linux just passed 1 percent for the first time. Around the same time, however, W3Counter published figures for the same month indicating that it had just passed 2 percent. Many FOSS aficionados, meanwhile, argue that it could be 6 percent or higher. The result? You guesstimated it: nothing short of chaos and confusion.

Last month the plans for Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 "Sandtorg" were outlined with this next major release of our Linux (and Mac OS X, OpenSolaris, and BSD too) benchmarking software set to introduce many new features for the testing core, Phoromatic for providing remote benchmarking support, a performance and benchmarking oriented Linux distribution, and many other advancements. Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 will not be released until late July or early August, but the first alpha release has been made available this afternoon.

Get your RSS feed readers ready because here is my list of the best sites/feeds to stay in touch with the latest developments in the linux community. This is the short list — there are many personal/professional blogs/sites that should be included in a full list. But, most of them are aggregated in the following sites.

An element of Hadopi which hasn't received much or enough attention as yet, is a section which specifies steps that can be taken by computer users to ensure that they will not be found liable under the new regime. What the law intends is to set up a meeting between security software vendors, antipiracy organizations and ISPs to decide what software you need to install on your machine, so that they can be sure that you behave yourself. If you don't fancy installing their device, then you'll just have to swallow any liability consequent to someone else using your machine or accessing your connection.

[Not really FOSS related, but still of importance I think. -- Sander]

KMyMoney is a true open-source program that surprised me when I first started using it. I didn’t even know it existed until my brother told me about it and I didn’t really know what to expect from the program, but I was very pleased by it’s feature set and by it’s overall look and feel. I have not been disappointed by using the program and if you give it a try, I don't think you will be either.