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Mark your calendars: this year's Software Freedom Day is September 20 (the third Saturday in September). If you're looking for an occasion to help out with the spread of free and open source software, that's a great one.

GNOME enthusiasts have a couple of good options when it comes to searching, launching, and otherwise manipulating and accessing files, applications, and information right from the desktop: GNOME-Do, and the GNOME Deskbar applet. GNOME-Do is a desktop search and application-launching applet similar to the now-defunct GNOME Launchbox. It's inspired by Quicksilver, an applet for Apple's Mac OS X operating system. Do was built for the GNOME desktop but also runs on KDE. Developers call Do an "intelligent launcher tool" because it uses predictive technology to guess what you want to do when you start typing the first few letters of the name of an application, file, or contact.

I used to think that Gnome 1.4 was the Last Good Gnome. Because when Gnome 2.0 came along, everything I liked was gone. It was dumbed-down to the point of unusability, and the roadmap called for yet more dumbing-down. So I switched to KDE for my main workstation, and IceWM, XFCE, and Blackbox for lower-powered PCs. For all these years I haven't seen much to like in Gnome. Not until Ubuntu Hardy Heron, that is.

Each year, Linden Labs, the folks behind online virtual world Second Life hold the Linden Lab Innovation Awards, dubbed the Hippos. This year Linden recognized the achievements and contributions of seven members of its open source community. The awards ceremony was held live in Florida, but also took place simultaneously within Second Life.

In recent years, Linux distributions have successfully made the transition from being the exclusive domain of technical users to being suitable for even brand new computer users. However, unlike with proprietary software and operating systems, GNU/Linux is built mainly on the efforts of users who volunteer their time and expertise to write programs. The result is that the success of free and open source software (FOSS) depends on feedback and contributions from its users. New users, or users without programming skills, may not understand how to contribute, or even see the need for contributions. But non-programmers can contribute a great deal to FOSS projects, benefiting not only other users but also themselves in the process. Even you can help.

Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to release the code for its open-source server virtualization software Wednesday, and will make a commercial version of the xVM Server available next month. XVM Server can virtualize Windows, Linux and Sun's own Solaris operating system on x86 hardware from such vendors as Sun, Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Dell Inc., said Steve Wilson, Sun's xVM vice president. Previously, Sun's server virtualization strategy focused on its own operating system and the Sparc chip set, he said.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Black Duck Software has joined as a Foundation member. Black Duck provides solutions for software development teams and legal counsel to manage the hybrid software development process, which involves the assembly of internal software, open source software and other third-party code.

Linden Lab, creator of the online virtual space Second Life, recognized the accomplishments of outstanding individuals in its open source community this week at its Linden Lab Innovation Awards. Seven winners were announced at a "mixed reality" ceremony held both at a convention center in Florida and simultaneously within the Second Life system. Linden's head of open source development Rob Lanphier emceed the awards ceremony at the Second Life Community Convention (SLCC). It was the second such annual event, initiated last year at the 2007 SLCC following the release of Second Life code as open source. A panel of six judges selected winners in five categories, with each winner receiving a "Hippo Award" prize package.

Are you ready to throw out your old, slow, bug-filled Windows PC? Before you do so, consider this story about how Ubuntu 8.04 saved an aging Compaq Presario 2100 from certain death. The blog entry appears on Works With U, the independent guide to Ubuntu Linux.

Up until very recently every system, desktop and laptop, in their catalog ran Windows and sported a Windows logo in the ad. While the majority still do a half a dozen laptops, all low-end netbooks, are sold with Linux preinstalled and the Tux logo is prominently featured in some of the ads

Citadel provides plenty of groupware functionality in a scalable, easy-to-deploy package. This week, learn how to manage users, set up an e-mail server and provide RSS feeds.

As the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics become more important, not only to the economy, but to our understanding of the natural world and ourselves, Linux is becoming a better platform on which to build and deploy the software scientists will rely on. A few groups have even gone so far as to create entire distributions geared for computational biology, such as BioBrew and Debian-Med. One of the more prominent comes from Oxford's National Environmental Research Council's (NERC) Environmental Bioinformatics Centre (NEBC). Bio-Linux does not sell itself as your average distribution, but it does not measure up to an average distribution either.

It has been a couple of weeks since Akademy 2008 finished. KDE's contributors are now back home, more enthusiastic than ever about our future. If you missed the talks videos are now online. This article covers what happened during the week and outlines some of the results.

The Ohio LinuxFest Free and Open Source Software Conference and Expo in Columbus, Ohio October 10th and 11th 2008 list of speakers.

Speakers include:

Paul Ferris - Managing your Free Software career

Jon"maddog" Hall - Sustainable Computing

Peter Salus - Where Next? - Ohio LinuxFest

Celestia is a free opensource space simulation software that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia provides photo-realistic, real-time, three-dimensional viewing of the solar system, the galaxy and the universe and has become a valuable tool for education in Astronomy. Celestia is used in homes, schools, museums and planetariums around the world, it also is used as a visualization tool by space mission designers.

Developers have integrated a network topology visualization tool in the Nmapu2019s Zenmap graphical user interface by using RadialNet. And the network scanner now also recognizes iPhones and Wii consoles.

Windows Guy moves from openSuse to Linux Mint 5 after receiving an overwhelming number of recommendations from his readers to test it. Another in his continual quest to find a replacement for Vista that just works.

In my job as a systems engineer, I have handled various storage implementations for our enterprise clients. These may be in the form of direct-attached storage (DAS), network-attached storage (NAS), storage area network (SAN), or Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) systems. In these implementations, clients generally use proprietary storage products from vendors such as EMC, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and EqualLogic. Many of these devices work just like ordinary servers with multiple hard disks and an operating system. Some use Unix and Linux as base operating systems, so I began to explore the possibility of using that kind of operating system on ordinary servers to turn them into storage boxes.

The most powerful physics projects in the history of known universe - The $10 Billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC)- shot its first light speed beam this morning around its 27 km circuit. Beyond the 20 years it took to build and half of all the world's astrophysicists it also takes another key ingredient to make LHC work -- Linux.

This tutorial explains how to set up a FreeRadius 2.x server for wifi authentication, authorization and accounting in conjunction with MySQL & web based management with Daloradius on CentOS 5.x. Production deployment is also possible with minor tweaking.