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Ubuntu is well known in user circles as the cool kids' Linux. It's available preinstalled on PCs and laptops from Dell Inc. and from numerous smaller computer vendors. What Ubuntu hasn't been known as is a Linux distribution that matters to CIOs and IT managers. Things are changing. Canonical Ltd., Ubuntu's parent company, is finally taking serious action on its long-announced plans to become a serious enterprise Linux player. The Isle of Man-based Linux distributor isn't just targeting data center servers, although that's on its list.

Buckling under the weight of the Internet radio royalty hike that SoundExchange pushed through last July, Pandora may pull its own plug soon. Despite being one of the most popular Internet radio services, the company still isn't making money, and its founder, Tim Westergren, says it can't last beyond its first payment of the higher royalties.

The explosion of low-cost, ultra-portable laptops that started to appear in computer stores is a dream come true for many technology enthusiasts and free software developers who are keen to offer solutions for the new computer class. In this week's issue we take a first look at Mandriva Flash 2008.1, one of the first distributions with official support for the ASUS Eee PC. Does it really work "out of the box" as claimed? Read on to find out. In the news section, Slackware introduces KDE 4.1 into the development tree, Fedora hints at a major problem with its update infrastructure, and Linux Mint suffers from a crippling attack on its web site. Also in this week's issue, links to two excellent interviews with Ubuntu's Scott Remnant and gOS's David Liu. Finally, after a short break, we have resumed adding new distributions to the DistroWatch database - one of the new ones introduced last week is FaunOS, an interesting Arch Linux-based desktop distribution optimised for USB Flash drives.

Three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were ordered by a federal court judge to cancel their scheduled presentation at DEFCON about vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system, violating their First Amendment right to discuss their important research. EFF represents Zack Anderson, RJ Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa. The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) sued the students and MIT in United States District Court in Massachusetts, claiming that the students violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by delivering information to conference attendees that could be used to defraud the MBTA of transit fares.

NimbleX, a Slackware-based distribution, advertises itself as "the new wave of Linux." However, what is appealing in NimbleX -- its speed and small footprint and the resulting selection of alternative software choices -- will likely strike veteran GNU/Linux users as being very old school. By contrast, its limitations -- too little attention to such aspects as the installer, packaging, and security -- seem all too modern, being reminiscent of other distros intent on commercialization or emulating Windows, even though NimbleX is a community distribution and largely a labor of love for Romanian developer Bogdan Radulescu.

Microsoft's Open XML format overcame its final stumbling block and is moving forward as an official ISO standard. The file format had been held back earlier this year by claims that the voting process was rushed and that Microsoft's specification information was incomplete.

OpenBSD provides a UNIX distribution with a primary emphasis on security and cryptography. If you're looking for a UNIX distribution to deploy in the most critical nexus in your network infrastructure, look no further than OpenBSD. The recent release of OpenBSD—version 4.3—includes several new features and bug fixes that this article reviews.

Debian GNU/Linux is now 15 years old -- which isn't too shabby for an operating system. Yet though Debian is still alive and kicking, I'm not so sure it holds the market position that it should at this point in its maturity.

Intel's P45 Chipset was released this summer along with the P43, G43, and G45 Chipsets as the mainstream Eaglelake alternative to Intel's current flagship X48 Chipset. Though over the older X48 motherboards, the P45 has the advantages of using Intel's newer ICH10 / ICH10R Southbridge and support for up to 16GB of DDR2/DDR3 memory, which is double that of what's supported by the X48. Today we are looking at two Intel P45 motherboards compliments of Gigabyte with their EP45-DS3L and EP45T-DS3R. The EP45-DS3L and EP45T-DS3R are just two of Gigabyte's motherboards bearing the P45 Chipset but in total they have eight different motherboards using this version of the Eaglelake Chipset.

“Hacking Exposed Linux” by ISECOM (Institute for Security and Open Methodologies) is a guide to help you secure your Linux environment. This book does not only help improve your security it looks at why you should. It does this by showing examples of real attacks and rates the importance of protecting yourself from being a victim of each type of attack.

This tutorial explains how you can set up a FreeRadius server with Wifi authentication and accounting in conjunction with MySQL & web management with Daloradius on Ubuntu 8.04 (LTS). This howto should work for a newbie. Production deployment is also possible with minor tweaking.

Ever wonder why Red Hat spends so much time focused on the JBoss middleware market and so little time trying to make Linux a desktop standard? The answer involves some simple but startling open source math. Check out this little piece of Red Hat financial info, uncovered by The VAR Guy.

Got visions of saving the world? Every now and then it takes spending some time in someone else's world to realize you don't always have all the answers. To some of us, that isn't just a blow to our egos...it's a sea change in the way we perceive ourselves and our role in the little world we've created.

Wikis are sprouting up everywhere, so it's not surprising that the world of investing, finance, business and money management is getting in on the act. If you're looking for stock tips, industry analysis, information about how to start a home business, or advice about paying off credit card debt, you might turn to one of these money-related wikis to benefit from the wisdom of the digital crowd.

This series began with the idea of showing a form that could be used by an external user(s) as a means of adding content to a remote site. The idea of the use of a password form was there from the onset. It made sense to limit access to a select set of users. The password form enhances security, which became an issue with the data input form. Nonetheless, until very recently, I intended to skip any real discussion of password forms. I was going to cite a book's discussion. At most, I might have mentioned a few potential problems. I was certain that would have sufficed. I changed my mind when I saw the ease simple minded SQL injection breached this barrier. Therefore, more than a few words are warranted.

Although we all remember that everything started with legendary Norton Commander, somehow lots of TC users religiously believe that every other, two pane file manager, is a not worthy clone. They all share the same roots, but TC with its rich Plugin library managed to capture the largest user base. In this article I will try to cover the most popular alternatives for both TC and NC. It is not a review though, so you won’t find any particular recommendation at the end. Everyone chooses the set of features that is relevant for his or her needs.

Gmail, Google's popular Web mail application, is already full of useful features all on its own. But Firefox users can further customize Gmail with a variety of add-ons. Some only change the appearance, while others add functionality that makes Gmail more like a personal planner than just a plain old email application. Let's take a look at three Firefox add-ons for Gmail.

Microsoft products have always presented a paradox for organizations. On one hand they seem to be universally derided. On the other, they remain the corporate standard. Open source, SaaS/online and other alternatives have had a hard time gaining widespread traction in large organizations. That's partly because companies would likely rather deal with the devil they know, a de facto standard, rather than something else, and partly due to institutional inertia.

Open source software has long been accepted as a legitimate software license by tech-savvy crowds. It's become recognised by business. And even the courts are taking seriously open source software authors rights despite the fact no money has changed hands. This month an Artistic License was tested in court in the case of Robert Jacobsen vs KAM Industries, and upheld as enforceable copyright conditions. It was a landmark decision ratifying the philosophical basis behind FOSS.

A guide to the kernel development process aims to encourage participation by new programmers by explaining what is involved. Some developers and businesses attempting to submit changes to the Linux kernel find themselves tangled up with the processes used, according to the guide, which was written by Jonathan Corbet, executive editor of lwn.net and himself a Linux developer.