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Parted Magic has been updated to version 3.6 and includes bug fixes, updates and a number of new programs. Parted Magic can be used to create, move, delete and resize drive partitions and will run on a machine with 128MB of RAM. File systems supported include ntfs, fat, reiserfs, reiser4 and hfs+. LVM and RAID are also supported. The update to the open source live CD collection of hard disk management tools "offers a major overhaul in the way Parted Magic boots and behaves."

Last year, I decided to give Linux a try. Everything was going well, until I started working for a company that uses Microsoft Outlook for e-mail. There's simply no straightforward, reliable way to run Outlook on Linux. I tried Outlook Web Access, but the service strips code from HTML attachments, among other limitations. (The company I worked for prior to my current employer used Lotus Notes, which is probably the only e-mail program in the world more proprietary than Outlook. Organizations must get some huge benefit from using these closed e-mail systems, because they sure make life difficult for users.)

Earlier this year, Freescale announced it would enter the netbook market with its own set of chips based on the ARM architecture, claiming they would yield better battery life than the Atom-based netbooks of today. The company gave a little more info today, and among other things, they want to support Google's Android on their netbooks.

Proxmox VE (virtual environment) is a distribution based on Debian Etch (x86_64); it provides an OpenSource virtualization platform for running virtual machines (OpenVZ and KVM) and comes with a powerful, web-based control panel (it includes a web-based graphical console that you can use to connect to the virtual machines). With Proxmox VE, you can even create a cluster of virtualization hosts and create/control virtual machines on remote hosts from the control panel. Proxmox VE also supports live migration of virtual machines from one host to the other. This guide shows how you can use Proxmox VE to control KVM and OpenVZ virtual machines and how to create a small computing cloud with it.

Open source technology has a role in aiding Singapore's quest to become a hotbed for the creation of innovative products and services, according to a senior government official. Through its 10-year Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) masterplan, Singapore seeks to create an environment where its people, the private and public sectors can collaborate on innovative next-generation ICT products and services, said Tan Geok Leng, CTO of the country's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).

Popular musical artists including Peter Buck of REM and Youssou N’Dour are part of a new project to raise funds to put open source software tools in the hands of African doctors. Partnering with Grammy Award-winning artist N’Dour, global non-profit IntraHealth International is releasing a charity album called OPEN Remix. Artists on the album have donated remixes of N’Dour’s Wake Up song as part of the project.

Last week S3 Graphics had released the Chrome 540 GTX, which is their newest and fastest PCI Express graphics card . Similar to when announcing the S3 Chrome 540 GT, in the Chrome 540 GTX press release they once again mention Linux support along with OpenGL 3.0 capabilities. However, they talk up Linux support, but fail to provide the support. We have just heard back though from S3 Graphics' Benson Tao, which is the one that previously told us there would be Chrome 500 Linux support in December along with a beta OpenGL 3.0 driver. What though did he have to say this time?

pngcrush is an optimizer tool for PNG (Portable Network graphic) files. pngcrush is an excellent batch-mode compression utility for PNG images. Depending on the application that created the original PNGs, it can improve the file size anywhere from a few percent to 40% or more (completely losslessly)

Thanks to this press release that appeared on Linux Today a few weeks ago, V.i. Labs Announces CodeArmor Intelligence Support for Linux Platforms, I had a "Oh no, the MAFIAA is coming to Linux" moment:... My first reaction was "Ick! No way!" because the release uses inaccurate buzzwords like "intellectual property" and "piracy", and it sounds like spyware. Yay, spyware for Linux! But something about it piqued my curiosity, so I did a little digging.

Hugin is an excellent cross-platform panorama stitcher favored by many users of not only Linux, but also Windows. It’s used to stitch multiple photos taken in succession into one panorama, and includes the ability to manually align stitching points, as well as lens effects, tunnel correction, and blending of edges and colors to make the image as natural as possible.

For a long time now Microsoft has insisted that potential partners recognise its patent portfolio before signing interoperability agreements. But now Microsoft has stepped out of that box and signed an interoperability agreement with Red Hat that excludes any mention of patents. The agreement is aimed at improving interoperability between the two companies’ virtualisation products. The companies will join each other’s certification and validation programmes as well as provide technical support for mutual customers, as part of the agreement.

I decided earlier this week I needed to rip a DVD and looked around at the available options on Linux. I’m not overly experienced at doing this sort of thing, in the past I’ve always got the job done with applications like dvd:rip but not had a very satisfying experience. I’d heard a while back that the popular program Handrake had now released a Linux version with a GUI (Graphical User Interface) and it seemed a good idea to try it out. I have some Mac using friends who really like it and often tell me how good it is for ripping discs. There’s been a command line version of Handbrake on Linux for quite some time I believe but I never used it, I can handle myself pretty well in a terminal but it just didn’t appeal. Handbrake is licensed under the GPL and as such is completely free and open source software, with all these facts and endorsements ringing in my ears I figured I should take it for a spin, no pun intended.

With about a month having passed since the release of Phoronix Test Suite 1.6 "Tydal", the first alpha development release to its successor is now available. Phoronix Test Suite 1.8 "Selbu" will focus on a number of underlying improvements and further polishing from where Tydal was left off. There will also be quite a bit of preparatory work for Phoronix Test Suite 2.0. Selbu is expected for release in the second quarter of 2009.

Defend the Earth from alien invaders in this action-packed, story-driven space shooter!

When we were in college, my wife (then, girlfriend) had the best answering machine greeting message, ever. When people called her, the answering machine would answer, “Hello?” and wait. Invariably, the caller would start talking as though they had actually reached a live person. They'd be talking about last weeks assignments, or a party next week. Then the other shoe would drop.

When announcing Ubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope, Mark Shuttleworth had hoped to make this next Ubuntu Linux release perform better and to boot "blindingly quick", in particular with Ubuntu beginning to appear on more mobile devices. Well, with Alpha 4 have been released earlier this month, are Canonical developers and the community in the right direction with making Ubuntu 9.04 boot quickly? We have boot-time benchmarks of the latest Ubuntu 9.04 work along with Linux desktop benchmarks comparing it to its predecessor, Ubuntu 8.10.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest story of the past week was the release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 'Lenny'. After nearly two years of continuous development and a controversial vote or two, we finally get the chance to take a quick look at the finished product - the new live media as well as the 'netinst' network installation CD. In other news, Ubuntu announces that Jaunty will ship with Linux kernel 2.6.28, Wiley publishes OpenSolaris Bible and makes three sample chapters available for free download, openSUSE's Zypper gains Bash-completion improvements, Red Hat publishes a 'State of the Union' address, the Woof project releases version 0.0.0 with support for Arch Linux, and Cuba develops their own Gentoo-based variant distribution called Nova. Also in this issue are links to two interviews - the first with Steve MacIntyre, the head of the Debian project, and the second with Scott Ritchie, an Ubuntu community developer.

When it comes to open-source communities, individuals are much better citizens than institutions. The enlightened self-interest that causes individuals to send back bug fixes, contribute ideas for new features and write documentation is much harder to find in institutions. This week, the JargonSpy analyzes why such a gap exists and what can be done about it.

Moonshine is both a Firefox browser plug-in and a desktop player. The plug-in can be downloaded and installed just like any other Firefox extension. The desktop player, which plays WMV/WMA content on your PC through Firefox, has to be built from source code.

If the VCS configuration model isn't confusing enough for you, there's still hope! Today we're going to take a look at creating new "types" for use with Veritas Cluster Server (VCS). In a broad sense of the term, almost everything you'll ever define in your main.cf (the main configuration file for VCS) is based on a specific "type," which is actually described in the only standard include file in that configuration file: types.cf - Note that both main.cf and types.cf are located in /etc/VRTSvcs/conf/config.