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The first two days at linux.conf.au are dedicated to "miniconfs," which cover specific areas of interest. The 2009 event in Hobart, Tasmania included a miniconf for mobile Linux; your editor attended a few talks there. As might be expected, there is a lot going on with mobile Linux, and a lot of interest.

Some times, the least convoluted approach is the only one that works. Today's topic covers a little issue I ran into at work (which I actually do from time to time ;) that had me puzzled for a bit. If you're a grizzled Solaris/Slakware veteran like me, some of the newer features of Solaris 10 are pretty much lost on you until you absolutely "need" to understand them ;)

SME Server (http://www.contribs.org/) is a Linux distribution designed for the office environment, similar to Microsoft Small Business Server or the now defunct Linux based NetMax Server.

Instead of ignoring open source conferences, Microsoft continues to invade them. The latest example: A Microsoft general manager is scheduled to keynote Digium AsteriskWorld on February 3. Why is Microsoft paying such close attention to an event for open source IP PBX advocates? The answer is obvious.

UK-based online lingerie and nightwear retailer figleaves.com has turned away from Microsoft and to virtualisation and open source software to revamp the technology platform that will support its upcoming ecommerce site. The decision to move to Red Hat Linux and VMWare technology on HP hardware was taken in May last year when the company chose to implement a new ecommerce suite from ATG. Speaking to ZDNet.com.au sister site silicon.com, figleaves.com chief of technology Peter Pedersen said the retailer had outgrown the old system.

The Debian Installer team has released a second "release candidate" installer for Debian 5.0, codenamed "Lenny." In announcing the release, maintainer Otavio Salvador offered few clues as to when Lenny might finally ship, however.

A change to User Account Control (UAC) in Windows 7 (beta) to make it “less annoying” inadvertently clears the path for a simple but ingenius override that renders UAC disabled without user interaction. Microsoft has officially responded to my concerns and continues to insist the functionality is “by design”, dismisses the security concerns and again leans towards they will not be addressing the issue for the final release of Windows 7.

Facing malware is a way of life in the digital world, and the pressure on everyone from home users to corporate giants to do all they can to minimize its damaging effects is immense. Just how much pressure there is was made quite clear on Saturday morning, as a routine update to Google's list of malware sites went horribly wrong, labeling every site in the company's database as dangerous and rendering the service unusable.

The so-called failure of Windows Vista has been heralded far and wide by industry watchers and assorted Microsoft haters. Microsoft was caught flat-footed without an operating system when the netbook phenomenon hit. Can Redmond can turn it around with Windows 7?

Bruce Allen is perhaps the world's best do-it-yourselfer. When he needed a supercomputer to crunch the results of gravitational-wave research, he built one with his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. That was in 1998, and since then he's built three more supercomputers, all in pursuit of actually observing gravitational waves, which theoretically emanate from black holes orbiting each other and from exploding stars but have never been directly observed.

We rightly celebrate how open source opens markets. But it can also close them. Take WiFi. It is still assumed by many property-owners that they can, and should, control what is done with electromagnetic spectrum within their properties. Because WiFi is low-power, high-frequency waves that attenuate quickly, someone with a substantial footprint can make this dream come true.

The 9th Free and Open Source Developer Meeting (FOSDEM) scheduled for the 7th and 8th of February, is expecting 5,000 open source developers to attend at the University of Brussels. The keynotes this year will be from Mark Surman, the Managing Director of the Mozilla Foundation, Bdale Garbee, the secretary of the Debian project and Leslie Hawthorn (Google – Summer of Code). The event tracks include collaboration, software development, security, kernel, distributions and systems. Ext4's history, features and advantages will be discussed by developer Theodore Ts'o. Other speakers include Max Spevack from the Fedora Project and Rob Savoye of the Gnash project.

Moblin 2 is Intel's answer to the ever-growing mobile market, designed specifically for Atom-based devices. The current alpha release is geared toward netbooks, but Intel has been working on its own secret schemes to release a device that will use Moblin 2 that I'm calling, for the lack of a better word, a smartbook. Intel Moblin 2 Alpha Screen Shots

Infragistics is today expected to open an online community for creating and storing patterns to build rich interfaces using Microsoft and other technologies. Called Quince, this is a free patterns catalogue and "community resource" to help those building user interfaces, from the look and feel through to the workflow. You will be able to search templates, get updates via RSS, rate patterns, and submit patterns using a pre-designed template that outlines important information you should include.

Asus is taking pre-orders for a netbook based on Intel's second-generation netbook platform, the secret-shrouded N280/GN40 chipset. Early product specs confirm that the second wave of netbooks are likely to offer faster graphics and lower power use, along with room for much, much larger batteries.

Much of the reader feedback to "Why Windows Must Go Open Source" is saying, "No way." But part of my hypothesis is the fact that Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) as a developer culture is much less averse to such a move than Microsoft as a business culture. Consider the Windows Template Library, code that's now part of Google's browser, Chrome. Microsoft's Windows Template Library is a light version of Windows Foundation Classes, which provide an efficient way for calling user interface services out of the Windows API set. A browser needs to make use of certain Windows functions for its own operations to succeed as a window on the Web. WTL makes those services available.

I was browsing around my local Carphone Warehouse shop last week. Unlike the last time I crossed their threshold (November) I noticed that their Ubuntu netbook display had vanished. There was only one netbook on display and it was advertised as running Windows XP. Their website also advertised the Asus EeePC with Windows XP too. I approached a sales person to ask about a GNU/Linux option on the Elonex and was informed that they no longer stocked them. What when wrong? Read the details of the inquest at Freesoftware Magazine.

SugarCRM has fundamentally overhauled the web services framework and has now added a REST (Representational State Transfer) interface that will allow for easier development of the services based upon Sugar data. Another new feature is a CSS based themes framework, which will allow developers to create new themes, without writing any code. The new Mobile Studio Editor will help to optimise SugarCRM for mobile devices with pre-built layouts and views for specific mobile use.

Ben Kepes at Cloud Ave. offers some interesting analysis of a question Yuuguu CEO Anish Kapoor recently tackled on his company's blog: Has software as a service (SaaS) killed open source as a business model? The question raised, of course, is why these concepts are at odds at all -- why are they mutually exclusive? They aren't, per se (SaaS companies can -- and do -- offer their code under open licenses), but Kapoor imagines that for some companies, SaaS takes a bit of the shine from open source. Kepes counters that while this might be the case, SaaS has a fair bit to gain from the open source model.

Have you ever woken up in the morning and said to yourself, “today is the day that I'm finally going to backup my workstation!” only to find out that you're a day late and about 320Gb short? Well, that's about what happened to me recently, but don't worry, the story has a happy ending. I'm getting ahead of myself though.