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Four percent of the people visiting The VAR Guy (www.thevarguy.com) now run the new Google Chrome Web browser. That's pretty darn impressive, since Chrome is only a week old, notes The VAR Guy. Here's the scoop.

Paragent, a start-up that marries open source with managed services, is turning heads at the DEMOfall show -- an invite-only event that can make-or-break a software company's business. Here's how Paragent could reshape the managed services market.

Well, well, well! We seem to be going on a crusade here at iTWire - the old W vs L battle. The Windows is better than Linux creed - which I think is another way of proffering reasons why marketing is better than technology. Ten reasons to run Vista? There are far more reasons than that to run GNU/Linux. And it doesn't take as long to enumerate them because the reasons are simple and you do not need ten paragraphs to outline each argument. When it comes to GNU/Linux, the KISS principle applies.

PCLinuxOS Magazine, September 2008 (Issue 25) is available to download

We're just about done with this series of somewhat disjointed posts on number pools and guaranteed matches. Hopefully, each post in the series has been somewhat entertaining and far enough removed from the starting post that we kept up some sense of originality. It wasn't too hard (unless we screwed up ;) since there were so many unique concepts to cover within the realm of reaching the Objective of the original post. Please refer back to our post on number pools for definitions of all the major terms and a listing of the Objective (although that definition is repeated in a few other posts along the way).

Desktop Linux reported that Lenovo seems to have quietly exited the desktop Linux business. Unfortunately for desktop Linux users, that news has turned out to be correct. Lenovo, in a note to Practical Technology, confirmed that it was exiting the pre-installed desktop Linux business.

In my ongoing quest to take over the world with Linux as my OS of choice, I've noticed that simply handing someone an install CD doesn't really do the trick. I've also noticed that formatting their Windows 95 install with a fresh version of Linux tends to make angry faces as well. The more tech savvy the user is, the more resistant to change they tend to be. As with most worthwhile endeavors, it takes time and patience for a person to learn to love Linux. The problem is that hating Windows isn't enough. Most people hate Windows, but feel trapped into using it. That's where my 3 step approach comes in.

Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced that the next major version number of Ubuntu (Ubuntu 9.04) will be codenamed "Jaunty Jackalope." In a posting to the Ubuntu Developer's list today, Shuttleworth outlined a number of parallels between the mythical beast and the release's goals.

The iTWire Vista Vs. Linux battle has been great fun to watch unfold, however it does seem to have missed the point that Apple Mac OS X is better than them both...Forget 10 reasons why Vista is better than Linux, or 20 reasons why Linux is better than Vista. All you really need to know is that there is one single reason why Apple Mac OS X is better than them both.

Reading WorldChanging's "editorial retrospective" by Ethan Zuckerman on the article on the OLPC XO he posted in June, 2006 really made me wish that the project had, well, worked out better. Articles like Ethan's remind me of the good work and ideals that have gone into the OLPC XO, which both refreshes me and frustrates me further. This post begins a four-part series on the One Laptop Per Child project, some of the key problems it has faced, and the amazing promise that it still holds for international development and global education.

The Servico Federal de Processamento de Dados (SERPRO), (a US$ 1 billion annual revenue Brazilian government owned IT enterprise), announced during the Debian Day Brasil 2008 Porto Alegre that it has selected Debian GNU/Linux as the preferred distribution for its hundreds of GNU/Linux development and production servers. Future SERPRO tenders and public hearings will include clauses requiring Debian GNU/Linux compatibility. Recent SERPRO tenders have already encouraged participation by small FLOSS regional companies, as well as Debian support services.

Jeff Elkner teaches high school students in Arlington, Va., about Linux and other Free Software. He's serious about helping budding computer scientists understand what FOSS is and what it can do for them, and he's one of those guys who always seems to be sharing his knowledge with others. One of Elkner's latest efforts, the Open Book Project, is a good illustration of his philosophy about sharing ideas and knowledge, which he says is similar to that of one of his heroes, Free Software advocate Richard Stallman.

Browser developer Opera Software has signed up with the Symbian Foundation, a Nokia-led consortium that was set up in June to turn the Symbian mobile operating system into an open source platform.

How to backup MySQL and recovery Using Zmanda Recovery Manager

The SQI/Vector partnership provides a professional looking presentation of low cost support services for small businesses in a highly reliable infrastructure. It provides the necessary tools to make Vector Linux a presentable option to be offered by consultants serving small business or for knowledgeable small business owners to tap into directly.

Citadel is 100% GPL, and doesn't play games with making either binary or source downloads easily available. If I had to describe Citadel in a word, it would be "simplicity". It is a complex application with a lot of power and flexibility, but it's easy to install and administer.

Live CDs let you boot an operating system without installing any software on a hard drive. There are plenty of Linux live CDs and lots of tools to customize them. The Ubuntu Customization Kit, tastefully called UCK, lets you add your favorite applications into the distro. If you're not happy with the factory-installed Ubuntu apps, here's your chance to spin up your very own Ubuntu live CD without too much effort. Installing UCK is a no-brainer -- grab the latest .deb package and use GDebi to install it. UCK requires tools such as fakeroot and mkisofs, which you can install using Synaptic. In addition to UCK, you need about 5GB of free disk space under your home directory, as well as the ISO of the Ubuntu version you want to customize.

Linux Installfest HOWTO provides information that could help you with the organization of a successful installfest. What is the definition of a successful installfest? Basically when the people are happy after such an event then that means the installfest went O.K. and it is successful. This howto is one of the documents need update and for that reason it is in the wiki. So, you all could help that document to become better.

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of the GNU Project by Richard M. Stallman. GNU is one of the oldest and best-known organizations in the free and open-source world, providing not only high-quality software, but also a well-known license (the GNU General Public License), and a philosophy that continues to influence many activists and programmers. The exact anniversary of Stallman's announcement is September 27th, 1983, when he called upon programmers to join him in creating "free Unix."

This week's feature story is a review of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" on the ASUS Eee PC. With Debian being the first Linux distribution to have an open communication channel with the Taiwan-based hardware manufacturer, our expectations were high, but is Lenny really a good choice for the popular ultra-portable? Read on to find out. In the news section, Google restarts the browser war with Chrome, Dell unveils the long-awaited Inspiron Mini 9, Mandriva Linux 2009 enters the release candidate stage, and Fedora calls on beta testers to help with testing the promising ext4 file system...