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Microsoft researcher Don Syme talks about the development of F#, its simplicity when solving complex tasks, the thriving F# community and the future ahead for this fuctional programming language.

In an effort to increase environmental awareness, the Dutch media company Spranq has introduced Ecofont, a perforated font that saves printing ink.

The past year has brought several invasive changes to the Intel Linux graphics stack with the introduction of the Graphics Execution Manager for GPU memory management within the kernel, support for the Direct Rendering Infrastructure 2, and kernel mode-setting finally getting ready to enter the limelight. How though has the work this year affected the overall performance of Intel integrated graphics on Linux? In this article we have run a few benchmarks that show where the driver was at a few months ago and where it is today.

Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, has announced plans to overhaul desktop notifications. The project is part of a broader initiative that the company launched earlier this year to boost the usability of the Linux software ecosystem. Transient visual notifications are employed extensively in desktop applications to provide users with passive updates about application status or system events. Some typical usage scenarios include notifying users when they receive new e-mail, when an instant messaging buddy signs online, or when a CD finishes burning.

Nginx (pronounced "engine x") is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server. Nginx is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. This tutorial shows how you can install Nginx on a Fedora 10 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

Microsoft has begun to realign its legal department, allowing it to work in collaboration with its engineers so that product teams can have more flexibility with open-source software. The company is evangelizing—internally—that more interoperability can be good for the bottom line. Microsoft's Sam Ramji, senior director of platform strategy, discussed with SD Times his company's evolution to a pragmatic viewpoint toward open source, and explained why the company is offering its support to some open-source projects that it feels advances its business and technology goals.

One of the most powerful aspects of free software is that its entire approach and mindset is orthogonal to proprietary software. It's not just better, it's profoundly different. That's one of the most important reasons that *everything* Microsoft has thrown against free software has not just failed, but failed dismally. Against that background, I have mixed feelings about the Linux Foundation 60 second video showcase.

Documentation is one area in which free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) is weakest. A project called FLOSS Manuals is trying to remedy this situation. The idea behind project is to create quality, free documentation for free software. FLOSS Manuals is the brainchild of digital artist Adam Hyde

Cornell College is the latest institute of higher education to embrace Ubuntu Server Edition, WorksWithU has learned. It’s not a huge deployment, but Cornell’s targeted Ubuntu use reinforces a growing trend at colleges and universities worldwide. Here's the scoop.

Linux rarely needs to be rebooted. But when it does, it’s often slow to boot. Fortunately, there are ways to speed things up. Some of these methods are not terribly difficult. (although some, unfortunately, are). Let’s take a look.

The votes are in and it looks like we're moving. Plus, the answer to the treasure hunt from last week. There are still several hours left to go on the poll (which may be closed at the time of publishing) as I write this post, but (unless something insane happens) it looks as though our desire to remove ourselves from blogspot agrees with the opinion of about 77 percent of the folks who took the time to vote.

There's no way around it: the longer you run a Windows installation, the slower and less responsive it gets. On my year-old dual-boot laptop, I wait longer and longer for Windows to boot, and longer and longer for programs to do what I ask. Meanwhile, my Ubuntu Linux installation, on exactly the same hardware, installed almost as long ago, is as snappy as the day I set it up—faster, in fact, as I've tweaked it and geeked it.

Linux Kernel developer Alan Cox has announced that he will be departing Red Hat for Intel. In an e-mail to the editors he explained that this move allows him to spend more time with his family and work even closer on the low level stuff that he really likes. Alan has been working on the Linux kernel since the early days in 1991 and has been contracted and employed by red Hat for ten years.

If you should ever need to clean up your computer, use this clean up utility for very low price (for free)..

[Sorry but I just had to share this one, almost spewed coffee all over my computer.. - Scott]

While commercial Linux distributor Red Hat has not grown enough to justify the ridiculous valuations that Wall Street put on the company when it went public a decade ago, the company is more or less on track to break $1bn in sales in the next couple years. In the third quarter of fiscal 2009 ended November 30, which had the global economic meltdown smack dab in the middle of it, Red Hat reported software subscription sales of $135.5m, up 17 per cent, with training and services sales of $29.9m, up 52.1 per cent. Overall sales rose by 22.1 per cent to $165.3m, and despite larger operating costs compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2008, net income rose by 18.7 per cent to $25.1m.

OK, it's not the regular full blown gnome desktop, but with only 2gigs to work with, it's a solution that works. Like many people, i have tried to get a "real" install of Ubuntu on my 2G Surf, but found myself reinstalling the default Xandros OS because of limited space on the SSD. The following tutorial will enable you to have an honest to goodness Ubuntu install that will do all the basic tasks you need.

Microsoft just can't quit you, Windows XP. The final shipment date of Microsoft's aged, yet distinctively non-Vista operating system has been extended yet again. System builders can now obtain Windows XP until May 30, 2009. Windows XP was originally scheduled for OEM extinction on January 31, 2009. That deadline was given once, twice, three times the delay to mid-2010, provided the Windows XP licenses were for netbooks and low-cost PCs that can't handle Windows Vista - or perhaps more importantly, can and do support Linux.

Lately I have been reading a lot of articles on the current happenings of Sun Microsystems. For years now, I have always had a soft spot for Sun Microsystems and despite all the struggles that they have been through, deep down I can feel that their end is approaching. If not the end, at least a complete remodel of their company will be taking place to cater to their recent investments in technology.

Even as some VARs begin to embrace open source applications they must now deal with a new challenge and opportunity: Open source's continued shift toward software as a service and cloud computing. The latest example involves a company called JumpBox working with Amazon.com. Here's the scoop from The VAR Guy.

OpenVAS is now out with its 2.0 release, which still shows some of its Nessus roots but isn't focused on keeping up with what's happening on the main Nessus effort. The Nessus fork is now carving out its own niche and moving out of the shadow of its creation.