Showing all newswire headlines

In this week's Distrowatch (which I recommend as a must-read for anybody who wants to follow what's happening in Linux and the BSDs), Ladislav Bodner writes about how a mouse-over problem that tends to freeze the screen in Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the ASUS Eee was solved in the Linux kernel but almost immediately returned due to the relevant patch being pulled from the kernel because it began causing other problems.

A flaw in the open OAuth online authentication protocol has prompted major OAuth providers like Twitter and Yahoo to suspend their support of this protocol and stop offering this service for the time being. The security hole allows attackers to trick their way into obtaining user data. The OAuth protocol will need to be updated to fix the vulnerability.

Almost two million PCs globally, including machines inside UK and US government departments, have been taken over by malicious hackers.

Halfway there. And then half of that. Theoretically, only a quarter of the way there, but halfway done ;)

We are very excited to announce the release of the first public version (v1.0) of the Ulteo Open Virtual Desktop. It comes after 2 years of development and months of beta tests by many organizations from our growing users community, and some of them are already using it in production. Now organizations can deliver to their PC users either Windows or Linux applications or a mix of the two on the same user desktop via the Ulteo Open Virtual Desktop.

Note: The following post is a guest blog submitted to Microsoft Subnet by a security expert who wished to remain anonymous. Joanna Rutkowska recently released her new security whitepaper and exploit code entitled Attacking SMM Memory via Intel CPU Cache Poisoning. The thing that struck me about her research is just how easy this is to do. There is nothing super fancy or complex about the exploit code. Due to its simplicity, the odds are very high that this attack vector has been in use, even before this research published last month. Still, because this attack is so stealthy, we wouldn’t necessarily have been able to detect it.

The "open" characteristic of open source tools helps enhance, rather than complicate, the teaching process, say its exponents. Roman Tuma, software practice director at Sun Microsystems, Asia South, said the open source model offers an entirely new way for developers and "increasingly knowledgeable", interactive users to collaborate and build upon the shared work done in the development of OSS.

Linus reflects on 18 years of working on Linux, the developer ecosystem and his goal for Linux on the desktop.

You have to read this paper! Microsoft - A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm [PDF], and it's from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, or ECIS. ECIS has written it in support of the EU Commission's recent preliminary findings, on January 15, 2009, that Microsoft violated antitrust law by tying IE to Windows. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that the issue of Microsoft's patent threats against Linux have been framed in a context of anticompetitive conduct.

[Direct link to the PDF for the interested -- Sander]

JauntyJackalope is coming, scheduled for release in April 2009. For every Ubuntu release we like to organize parties all over the world. At these parties everyone is welcome and we get together to celebrate, meet new friends and often introduce people new to Ubuntu to our community and our Operating System. Release parties are not only a great way to meet people but they are a lot of fun!

After Canonical launches Ubuntu 9.04 on April 23, the company will play an encore by launching a series of training courses — for Ubuntu Server Edition and even cloud computing. Here’s the scoop, only from The VAR Guy.

"For the past few weeks, I've been publishing an ongoing interview with Keith Curtis, an ex-Microsoft employee who walked away from a several-year gig at the software giant with a surprising conclusion: Microsoft's proprietary software development model is doomed, he says, and destined to be replaced by community-created open software."

Three years ago, Tom Foremski wrote an interesting piece called "Adapt or die--the choice facing the open source movement". It concluded: "I'll say it again: In one fell swoop Oracle drew a square around the open source movement and unless it can prove that it can remain independent--it is a dead movement." Needless to say, I wasn't too convinced by the argument. At that time, this was a purely theoretical discussion, but with the acquisition of Sun and hence MySQL by Oracle, those points suddenly gain a new pertinence.

In my previous guide about how to set up Enomalism2 on Ubuntu 8.10 I concentrated on just one KVM host. This tutorial is an extension to that article in that it shows how to add further Ubuntu 8.10 KVM hosts to the setup that can then be managed from one single control panel.

It's April 23rd and exactly on time Canonical has released Ubuntu 9.04 a. k.a. Jaunty Jackalope for download. Ubuntu 9.04 comes in three flavours: the Desktop edition, the Server edition and the Netbook Remix a.k.a. UNR. According to the press release: "Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition delivers a range of feature enhancements to improve the user experience. Shorter boot speeds, some as short as 25 seconds, ensure faster access to a full computing environment on most desktop, laptop and netbook models. Enhanced suspend-and-resume features also give users more time between charges along with immediate access after hibernation. Intelligent switching between Wi-Fi and 3G environments has been broadened to support more wireless devices and 3G cards, resulting in a smoother experience for most users."

Gnome 3 will introduce a new vision of usability and rapid change, rather than continuing with the incremental growth and gradual changes of Gnome 2. Gnome 3 may be just as ambitious and disruptive as KDE4. Will it work? Will users accept it? Bruce Byfield gazes into his tea leaves and tries to figure out how it will all work out.

In association with the Georgia Institute of Technology, Red Hat has carried out an open source index study and published it in the form of a world map.

If you’ve read anything about Windows 7 Starter Edition, your first reaction was probably the same as mine: Is Microsoft nuts? This ultra-cheap edition is intended for use on netbooks, but its biggest restriction sounds like a complete deal-breaker: it only runs three applications at once.

[It's like they're giving the market to Linux — Steven R.]

Florian Effenberger is co-lead of the international OpenOffice.org marketing project. Our sister publication Linux-Community asked him how the deal between Sun and Oracle would affect OpenOffice.

ZFS may be locked into the Solaris operating system but “Butter FS” is on the horizon and it’s boasting more features and better performance.