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God bless local news. Annie Schubert was expecting a "bread and butter" Dell running Windows for school. But when she fired up her accidental Ubuntu machine, confusion was only the beginning of her problems. You see, Annie was ready to enroll in online classes at Madison Area Technical College (emphasis mine), so she bought a Dell laptop with Ubuntu pre-loaded. MATC lists as its requirements Microsoft Word and internet access, so when her Verizon DSL install CD wouldn't work and the word "Microsoft" was nowhere to be found, she called Dell. There, a gracious callcenter support drone told her that Ubuntu was just fine for everything she needed to do (true, I would say) and that it's just perfect for college students. Annie agreed.

All manner of campaigns have been tried to persuade Windows users to make the switch to GNU/Linux and every year is heralded as the year of GNU/Linux on the desktop. Whether these things come to pass or not only time will tell, but the latest electronic assault on the integrity of computers which emanates from the British Government via a European directive might just tilt the balance in favour of free and open software. I suspect however that the hard-core Redmondnites will blunder on as usual making the internet a gold mine for any individual, corporation or government maliciously inclined to steal or plant information your computer. So, what exactly is warrantless intrusion? Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.

It’s no secret that I’m a Linux fan. I love it. I use it. I tell of its goodness far and wide. It’s also true, however, that I administer and use a variety of operating systems throughout any given day. I like to think that makes me more objective than some, and I like to think more people will pay attention to me if I don’t bash every other operating system out there.

It has been gratifying to see the number of businesses and personal computers moving to Open Source software and the Linux Operating System. In our organization alone, the numbers, while small on a grand scale, are quite significant from where we stand. We've installed hundreds of Linux systems in the past two years and the retention rate of those systems are what we get excited about. However...

As a new parent, one of my concerns is the possible exposure of my daughter to adult oriented materials when she reaches internet surfing age. I’ve still got some years to go before I really need to come to the task of protecting my child from the cr@p that is pervasive throughout the internet, but as an IT professional, this is the biggest gripe I hear from parents all over. How can you protect your children while allowing them the freedom to use the internet responsibly and productively in order to become successful students and therefore successful adults?

Windows-only shops looking to do a little virtualization on the cheap need look no further than Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Hyper-V and the freebie Hyper-V Server 2008 standalone host. However, our tests showed that customers with even mildly complex virtualization requirements should run Hyper-V on top of Enterprise or Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2008 and manage guest virtual machines by adding System Center Virtual Machine Manager--which brings on licensing costs. As for non-Windows environments, Microsoft's claim that Hyper-V is capable of mixed operating system virtualization is technically accurate, but the latest version of Novell's SUSE Enterprise is the only flavor of Linux supported across the Hyper-V range.

Most software developers, whether open source or proprietary, would agree that the success or failure of any endeavour depends on building a community. This may be a community of fellow developers, advocates or just users, but unless a significant number of people take a project to their hearts, it's unlikely to make an impact. If you're an elite coder who dreams in C++, making your mark on a free software project could be relatively easy; you take the code – magically available under the GPL – and work out how to do something new or more efficient with it and then bash out your edits on a keyboard. You release your patch and the community sings your praises while you begin the process over again with the same or another project.

We recently held a olpc / LTSP presentation in Vienna, which gave us the opportunity to be experimental and check the wonderful world of using Sugar on various platforms via LTSP. We hooked up 2 Acer Aspire One netbooks, a Thin Client (Artec), a laptop acting as LTSP and ejabberd server, along with 2 traditional XOs. Before going into the details of the experiment some explanation is due. LTSP stands for Linux Terminal Server Project, and refers to the use of a mainframe like infrastructure, where minimal systems without hardrives and little CPU and RAM can be used as diskless terminals.

The 451 Group, a market intelligence consultancy that proudly distinguishes itself from its "pay-for-play-propaganda" competitors, predicts that 2009 will be a big year for open-source software merger and acquisition activity.

[So even though a bad economy hurts companies selling both Proprietary and Open Source solutions, merging them will help? - Scott]

This whole "intellectual property" mania is a mental illness that deserves its own entry into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It's like that great movie, "Aguirre: The Wrath of God." Give yourself a treat and watch it; it's a wonderful film that takes place after the fall of the Incan empire. Lope de Aguirre, played by the perfectly mad Klaus Kinski, leads a band of Spanish conquistadors on a quest for El Dorado, the legendary City of Gold. The quest is doomed, of course, as they struggle through hostile terrain and hostile locals, pushed onward by their own greed and ruthlessness.

January is here and it's that time of year for penguin-lovers everywhere to make their annual migration south to Australia to flock together. Linux.conf.au is one of the world's most popular technical Linux conferences, and for it's 10th anniversary is being held at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. The conference runs for a week, with two days of mini-confs followed by the main conference programme and culminating in an Open Day on Saturday.

If you are a Windows user and have not installed the MS08-067 patch from last October, then perhaps you had better pull your finger out. Of course, it could well be too late, and you could well be one of the three million or so users who have already fallen victim to one of the most widespread of worms to hit Windows for a long time. If you are a Linux or Mac user, of course, you can sit back and relax.

The EC has sent Microsoft a so-called "Statement of Objections," or SO, indicating that it believes the company has illegally tied its Internet Explorer browser to its Windows operating system since 1996.

One of the cool things about custom distributions of GNU/Linux is that they usually have better “eye-candy”. However, it’s not really that hard to provide your own. If you are setting up a multiple boot system, the GRUB boot menu will be an important startup step; remarkably enough, it is possible to include some graphics even as early as the boot menu. Terry Hancock gives you an expert guide to sexing up your boot menu. Read the full tutorial at Freesoftware Magazine.

Remember when things weren't so darned complicated? ;)

This time last year, the big news from the-company-formerly-known-as-Trolltech — now Qt Software — was a takeover bid from mobile-phone giant Nokia, which closed successfully in June for an estimated €104 million. Once again January brings Trolltech/Qt news from Nokia, this time announcing that beginning with the upcoming 4.5 release, the Qt framework will be licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

Every enterprise user is interested in information and every information starts from the basic building block, data. Data can reside in any data store, and can exist in many formats. Irrespective of that, you need to bring data to your table, do some massaging with your business use cases, and supply them as information. In this article we will see how Java Data Objects (JDO) can be used as an alternative to JDBC. We will also have a look at the Service Data Objects (SDO) in SOA.

There are many ways to boost your productivity. One of them is to take a break every now and then and play a quick game.

With hyper-commoditization of PC platforms, the only way forward may be a change in business model where platforms come with extra hardware features which are enabled on-demand for a fee.

ML: Who have been some of your most interesting guests? (List of past guests)

Dann: We have had so many great guests along the way. In fact, I am often quite surprised that some well known people come on our show and have actually listened to or do listen to us on a regular basis. Probably the biggest guest for me was Patrick Volderding, the creator and maintainer of Slackware; that was an awesome show. Other notable include Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Jeremy Allison, Bruce Perens, Dean Haglund (of Lone Gunman fame), Bil Herd (former Commodore engineer) and more recently Scott Sigler. As you can see, not all our guests are strictly Linux related, but most are. There have been so many wonderful people who have taken the time to share with us and the community.