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Last November, Openbravo, an open-source software (OSS) company in business for less than three years, celebrated the one-millionth combined download of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) and point-of-sale applications. While the number of actual deployments is far less, given that developers often download the software as part of a tire-kicking exercise, the high interest in an open-source application as sophisticated as ERP reflects the increasing traction that OSS is gaining in the corporate world.

Analysis – Last month, Microsoft’s market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. Initial data sets provided by Net Applications suggest that the Internet Explorer will drop once again significantly in December to below 69% and Mozilla will climb above 21%. IE8 is just around the corner, but current market share data suggests that Microsoft has no effective tool to stop the bleeding at this time - and Mozilla can pick up two out of every three users Microsoft surrenders.

Apparently, around 2:00 AM today, the Zune models either reset, or were already off. Upon when turning on, the thing loads up and... freezes with a full loading bar (as pictured above). I thought my brother was the only one with it, but then it happened to my Zune. Then I checked out the forums and it seems everyone with a 30GB HDD model has had this happen to them (Not a Linux story, but it certainly falls in the "neener neener" category)

CES rollouts will run the gamut from MSI's Wind "hybrid" netbook -- with a mix of SSD and HDD drives in a single machine -- to a high-end notebook with a secondary display. And Windows 7 could be closer than anyone thinks

This year at Phoronix we published 333 full-length original articles/reviews and wrote 691 news pieces -- with nearly all of them being about Linux or computer hardware in some form. Our total number of articles written at Phoronix since its inception in 2004 is over 1,300 articles and then about 2,000 news postings in the past two years. Below are our most popular articles this year. Mac OS X 10.5 vs...

If you're going to commit to something big, do it now when no one expects you to follow through ;)

In tight economic times when I was growing up, my family generally had “homemade” Christmases, where all the gifts were handicrafts they had made. It takes a lot of time, but it does save money, and in all honesty, those were some of the best I can remember. This year, I’m following much the same pattern, though my skills are different (I couldn’t knit a sock to save my life, and while I can sew, I’m not exactly good at it): this year I’m giving my kids (refurbished) computers. To find out what Terry Hancock did to refurbish old computers for his children read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.

On the one hand, who hasn't heard of Facebook? On the other hand, if you don't use it, how do you know what it is? For the Facebook faithful, maybe this book seems unnecessary, but for the rest of us, perhaps it is. Certainly for the parents of all the kids who use Facebook, this book should be required reading.

In my last post I had made some comments about the Microsoft Windows not being capable of enterprise high performance computing. In the comments (upon request) I had posted some details on the SCSI subsystem of the Operating System, talking of the scatter gather lists when sequential SCSI commands are being coalesced just prior to being sent to the SCSI-based media. I wanted to continue on that topic and focus specifically on the NTFS file system and why it too is not intended for enterprise class usage.

In this article, we cover setting up an Active Directory server for use, connecting to it, searching for information, adding, modifying entries, and removing entries. We also examine how to deal with LDAP errors, and get finer control of the results from a search operation. This is followed up by a class definition that encompasses all this functionality into a simple package.

LinuxPlanet Classics: Getting the fingerprint reader working hasn't advanced much since this article was first run, so here we go again, with some updated references. Please note that fingerprint readers, like all biometric devices, are easy to foil and do not provide strong security; but they are convenient.

KWordQuiz, KVocTrain, and other KDE-based programs use the KVTML file format for their data files. The format is just a fairly simple XML format but, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything available to convert a text file to this format. So, once again, AWK to the rescue.

Rather than announcing a road-map for 2009 or sharing all of the accomplishments this year that were made within the Compiz development community, Kristian Lyngstol has shared some grave concerns for this project that brought "desktop bling" to Linux. Kristian has outlined a few areas that that he believes need to be addressed otherwise it could mean the death of Compiz. Compiz in fact is just losing developers at this point and with the different forks taking place there is much stagnation occurring within Compiz.

Over the past few years, scheduled releases of open source projects have become the norm. Projects tend to release new versions according to a regular schedule as opposed to releasing when the developers consider all the work proposed, has been completed. Releasing "When it's done" is based upon the simple proposition that if you only release when you think the software is complete and usable, then that release will be of higher quality. How a project makes that decision of completeness would be up to the project; an active benevolent dictator's project could be simply decreed complete, while a larger community project may use voting or other feedback, to create an aggregate decision. Whichever way though, there will always be the possibility of issues missed, or downgraded without the community noticing and therefore holding up the release while those issues are fixed.

Been creating Intrepid (lbex) HVM image,supposed to be loaded as PV DomU, i’ve got an issue with default LVM partitioning been done by Ubuntu Intrepid Server. Image been created may be easily loaded at Xen 3.3.X Dom0 via traditional xm-profile by not via “pygrub” or “pv-grub”, expecting /boot partition not of LVM’s type. Up on creating Intrepid HVM image, boot partition and LVM , containing “/” filesystem and swap partition have been setup

After Ubuntu gained popularity, some distributions switched to Ubuntu as their base distribution. Also many new Ubuntu based distributions started to appear. Most of these can be categorized based on the following criteria...

For many, migrating to Linux is a rite of passage that equates to a thing of joy. For others, it's a nightmare waiting to happen. It's wonderful when it's the former; it's a real show stopper when it's the latter. But that nightmare doesn't have to happen, especially when you know, first hand, the most common mistakes new Linux administrators make. This article will help you avoid those mistakes by laying out the most typical Linux missteps.

Actually, it was on the 25th of December. Linus Torvalds played Santa Claus and released a gift for all Linux users. It's the New Kernel. Let's take a closer look to this new piece of art.

The past year has seen strides in open source's place in the industry, cementing its role as a major force in the enterprise -- with several key players and stakeholders rising to the top. Just what do they have planned for the next twelve months? Also this year, the breakneck pace of development in networking technology continued apace. But with concerns about security and energy consumption at all time highs, there's still a great deal of work that needs to get done. And quickly.

A new centre aimed at speeding the development of mobile computing devices around the Linux-based Moblin OS opened in Taipei. The idea is for Taiwanese companies to use the centre as a testing ground for new netbooks and mobile Internet devices (MIDs), as well as develop more applications around Moblin.