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The feud between Minix inventor and operating system czar Andrew W. Tanenbaum and Linux Torvalds is legendary in the OS world. Before Linux there was Minix. Torvalds used to be a Minix user who set up his first Linux version in 1991 on Professor Tanenbaum’s operating system. Mr. Tanenbaum has now agreed to write a guest editorial for Linux Magazine. His opinion has not changed over the years: Linux (and Windows) are “unreliable.”

IBM launches a Linux-based, security-rich desktop solution that has been developed along with Virtual Bridges and Canonical. The concept is simple enough: save money by ‘amplifying’ Lotus collaboration software and Ubuntu to a larger user base, and do it using the power of virtualisation.

This is WFTL Bytes!, your occasiodaily FOSS and Linux news show for Friday, December 5, 2008, with your host, Marcel Gagné. This is episode 34. Today's show is brought to you by the letter O. Stories include a Songbird that's just turned 1, an extreme makeover for OpenOffice.org, more on the faster, slicker version of said OpenOffice.org, IBM reinvents and rediscovers thin clients, as a newcomer to the world of Opera hits a high note.

PC/OS aims to be an easy-to-use Linux distribution right out of the box. Being Ubuntu-based, it has a head start on being user-friendly, but PC/OS goes above and beyond Ubuntu's measures to ensure ease of use by having common third-party non-GPL software included in the install. The PC/OS distribution comes in several different flavors: OpenServer, OpenWorkstation, and OpenDesktop, all of which weigh in at around 700MB and fit on one CD. Included with the server edition are Webmin and other GUI utilities to make various server operations easier. The workstation edition includes multimedia production tools, software development tools, and office tools. I tested the desktop edition, which focuses on everyday use..

Star Wars as it was meant to be seen; and not heard. Since this Telnet version of Star Wars was released a long time ago (less than a decade) in a galaxy far far away (not in my back yard), a lot of the links that claim the story is incomplete are incorrect. As of the writing of this post, I've watched the entire thing. Cool, yet sad. The best part is that, since there's no sound, you don't have to actually "hear" Luke whining ;)

The military has always had better security than we can get on our computers, and Green Hills Software, a provider of a real-time, secure operating system called Integrity, wants to change that. To that end, the company has spun its Integrity operating system into a wholly owned subsidiary called Integrity Global Security and has set it loose with the job of becoming a kind of security abstraction layer for Windows, Linux, and Solaris guest operating systems on x64 iron.

Microsoft is paying companies — in the form of discounts — in order to give the illusion that everyone respects Microsoft’s argument that Linux infringes on Microsoft IPR and that software patents are universally scary. This payment is akin to those OOXML briberies where Microsoft offered money to partners in return for support. Novell was paid as well, for a variety of things, including IPR FUD and OOXML support.

In Part 1 we had a look at running multiple templates, and at creating dynamic elements and styles. In this article we will discuss about Creating Dynamic CSS Styling and Working with Template Variables.

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Open Source Working Group has released its Free and Open Source White Paper with press release here: "...Even the most skeptical interpretation of the numbers presented on Free and Open Source deployments and patients shows that these systems are being used in sizable numbers,” said Ignacio Valdes, MD, MSc the primary author of the paper and chair of the AMIA Open Source Working Group. He continues, “This paper is for practitioners, CIO's, IT staff, and policymakers making difficult health IT decisions with valid concerns about cost, ethics, interoperability, patient privacy, security and the future of their organizations in the hands of proprietary software. This white paper should be a must-read for every organization that uses or is contemplating the use of Electronic Medical Records.”

IBM, Canonical and Virtual Bridges have launched a low-cost, virtualized Ubuntu Linux build for big — really big — corporate customers. Here’s the scoop, along with the implications for Microsoft, Novell and Red Hat.

Joi Ito and the Creative Commons need help getting the word out -- and defined. Creative Commons licenses allow (to varying degrees) the content they apply to to be freely used, distributed, and altered, with varying levels of attribution or certain restrictions on commercial use. One of the gray areas Creative Commons has been grappling with is how exactly one defines "non-commercial.

If you run Ubuntu, openSUSE, Debian, or Mandriva, among other distributions, then whenever you run OpenOffice.org you don't run the "official" version, but rather Go-OO, an office suite based on the OpenOffice.org source code. Go-OO includes enhancements and functions that haven't been accepted by Sun, and that may never be, because of licensing, business, or other reasons.

It has become clear that the RIAA is losing ground in the file sharing wars. They tried to play nice (actually, no they didn't), tried to offer a superior product (actually, for years they offered no product), and tried to appeal to people's decency (actually, they called everyone thieves from day one). To fend off users legal rights, they have tried to employ a variety of technological methods which seem to have stymied those without permanent markers for the better part of 20 minutes. All is not well in lawsuit central, the California edition, not the Utah one.

Microsoft is adopting technology from EMC's RSA security division for Windows to police data and prevent loss and theft of information. The companies announced Thursday Microsoft will license RSA's data loss prevention (DLP) engine for future versions of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and "similar" products. Microsoft would not be drawn on whether the DLP engine will be built into Office or the forthcoming Windows 7. Office would be logical move given it features the Outlook client used by Exchange and is where potentially sensitive documents can be created in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Wow, the competition among open source browsers is getting so heated that you have to stay on top of the day-to-day goings on with the pre-release versions. We've written before about Google Chrome winning speed tests, and I keep hearing people cite it as the fastest browser. Meanwhile, CNet has been posting speed results showing very strong performance from the beta version of Firefox 3.1 (it is indeed snappy). Now, there are some new performance results out that show the nightly builds of Webkit--the open source rendering engine within Safari and Chrome--posting the fastest performance of all.

Boxee announced today that it has added Netflix video downloads -- including the ability to browse Netflix’s media library from within Boxee -- to its A/V media center platform for Linux, Mac, and (soon) Windows PCs. This Boxee enhancement also marks the first time Netflix instant downloads will be available to users of desktop PCs running Linux.

Novell's latest quarterly results, released Dec. 4, offer good news and bad news for the open source movement, according to The VAR Guy.

The Internet is full of software and hardware forums, tips, tricks, and howtos from all kinds of people. It is a wonderful thing that there are so many generous users sharing what they have learned. Chances are you'll find better information from these outside sources than on the official project sites. Naturally the quality is pretty uneven because it's people from all walks of life contributing-- young, old, non-native language speakers, and so forth. Nobody expects Nobel-winning literary excellence, but there are a few simple techniques for writing better documentation that anyone can learn.

Imagine being able to charge cell phones just by shaking them....Basically, M2E makes use of the Faraday principle which states that a "moving magnet could induce an electrical current in a wire coil," to quote what's written in the M2E web site. The charger has a chamber equipped with a wire coil. Now, when the charger is moved, a magnet moves through the coil creating the energy. M2E, however, tweaked the technology so that even "subtle micro-motions" are translated into energy.

[I found this through Groklaw and after reading it I am left asking the same question PJ did; "Could this work for the OLPC XO, so kids don't have to rely on electricity to recharge batteries?" - Scott]

Developed in co-operation with Microsoft and released as open source, the OpenXML Document Viewer extension for Firefox translates Word 2007 documents saved in the Open XML format into HTML for direct display in the web browser. While fonts, formatting, images, tables, hyperlinks and diagrams can be converted, the original layout does not necessarily get preserved, as some technical elements might not translate into HTML code. The plug-in is still in its early development and currently only works with Firefox 3 for Windows and Linux. A Mac version and a plug-in for Opera are to follow by mid 2009. Surprisingly, there is currently no mention of an add-on for Internet Explorer.