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Google on Tuesday said its Android mobile operating system is not planning to join a growing consortium of mobile Linux companies even though the two sides have similar foundations and goals of besting Apple's iPhone. Eric Chu, a group marketing manager with Google's Android group, downplayed any talk that his company would be lending its name to the Linux Mobile Foundation -- or LiMo -- in an attempt to standardize mobile middleware. LiMo said on Monday that it has signed 11 new member companies in recent weeks and said that the number of mobile devices running the LiMo OS now totals 21.

Shakiness of macroeconomy plus general problems with travel arrangements caused many usual attendees to sit out this year's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. More than 7,500 people signed up, but about half that actually showed up, some estimates said. But there was no lack of enthusiasm for new product releases — especially in the data center, mobile and cloud computing sectors. Those who stayed home missed a lot of good new products and plenty of good networking opportunities.

[This article has much nicer pictures than what I took, which I will try to rectify next year. :-) - Scott]

This year's Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas is pretty much like all the ones in the past. It's a world-class conference with speakers that either bore you or blow you away. Black Hat is known for releasing a few Zero-day exploits and exploring nearly every other covered topic far better than any other computer security conference. Unfortunately, about half the presentations are wastes of time, with the speakers seemingly spending more time trying to make weak jokes than to present cutting-edge facts.

Imagine being able to open any Web page on your server in OpenOffice.org, edit it, and save the changes back to the server by pressing the Save button. It may sound too good to be true, but that's exactly what the ODF@WWW project is set to achieve. Started as a relatively simple hack, ODF@WWW has become a nifty solution that allows end users to create and edit Web pages in OpenOffice.org. ODF@WWW is based on three components: a few custom configuration options in the Apache server, the JODConverter utility, and a couple of bash scripts.

More than 100 solutions providers are now backing Vyatta’s open source networking gear, The VAR Guy has learned. But that’s just the start of an open source networking tidal wave. Take a look

As powerful as all this cool technology is, it's also fragile, as I learned yet again today. A storm blew in and it was a doozy- high winds, machine-gun rain, lightning, and thunder that felt like it was RIGHT HERE. What can the mighty Linux and FOSS machine do in the face of Mother Nature pitching a little fit? Not a darned thing. They're not even relevant.

"To the degree that Linux on the traditional desktop succeeds, it will need to approach the Apple Mac in usability and attract more graphic designers for design"

Openbravo — the open source ERP and point of sale (POS) specialist — is discussing a partnership with MySQL and exploring the virtual applications market, The VAR Guy learned while walking the aisles at LinuxWorld Expo. Here's why you should care

In my last article I talked about connecting Ubuntu Linux to Windows shares . In this article I will talk about the way that I connected to my networked printer. When I first connected an HP Inkjet 3550 printer to my laptop, it was easier to get it working than in Windows! The driver for the printer was already available in Linux, so all I had to do was select it and the printer worked.

Linspire, the distribution originally launched as Lindows, is no more, says Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos. Xandros purchased Linspire, the company, earlier this summer. This week, the company announced that it was going to revamp community distribution Freespire, basing its next version on Debian instead of Ubuntu, and using it as a precursor for Xandros Desktop Professional, in much the same way Red Hat uses Fedora and SUSE uses openSUSE. But the company didn't need multiple for-pay desktop distributions, so Linspire is getting the boot.

No one showed up to man the Debian booth which was actually one booth over from us. I have no idea why... although there was a hand written sign that said many of the Debian folks were in Argentina at some Debian specific conference. Ok?!?

Oddly enough no one showed up to man the Gentoo booth either. It was in the next isle over from us. There wasn't any explanation as to why their booth was empty. Eventually someone took the Gentoo sign down.

The latest edition of Linux World ground to a halt in San Francisco today. I made it into town just last night for a VIP party hosted by the Linux Foundation where I caught up with lots of the true believer friends (developers, journalists and corporate supporters), and for the Board meeting today. The LF board meeting today was productive, though (a highlight was a walk around the Linux Developers Network Site we brought live today, as well as the new Linux Application Checker that Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols immediately pronounced to be a "killer development tool."

When Jeffrey Spencer prepared for his college exams, he would tape his notes to the handlebars of his bike and ride to school, studying all the while. To him, it made perfect sense."I am a kinetic learner, which means I learn and mentally perform best when I am moving," he says.

The Secure Shell (SSH) and Secure Copy (SCP) make remotely performing system administration and copying files across secure links a painless operation. SSH and SCP use the same SSH protocol to protect network communications, but they rely on users knowing if they want a shell or to copy a file beforehand. You cannot easily use an existing SSH shell connection to a remote machine and just grab one or two files; if you want the files, you'll have to make another SSH connection for the file copy using SCP -- unless you have ssh-xfer.

I recently decided to study for the Cisco CSSP certification. My main concern in the beginning was the fact that most of the lab simulation software that I found out there could only run on Windows, this was a problem for me given the fact that I do not own a Windows computer. After a quick search I found the wonderful Dynamips project that goes beyond what other simulators do by running actual Cisco IOS images, as well as the PEMU project which allows for running of Cisco PIX images. To integrate the various pieces of software and provide an interface for interaction with the devices I used dynagen.

In a bid to speed and simplify server application installations, Canonical is developing so-called virtual Ubuntu Linux Server appliances, The VAR Guy learned at LinuxWorld Expo. Here are the details

Enterprising engineers will soon get the chance to find out how Openmoko's Linux-powered phones work and to modify them. Barely a month after shipping the Neo FreeRunner, Openmoko has said it plans to make the schematics for this - and the Neo 1973 - publicly available under a Creative Commons (CC) license.

Ask any independent software vendor what he hates most about developing for Linux and he'll tell you that it's having to develop for SUSE and for Red Hat and for Ubuntu and ... you get the idea. The Linux Foundation has just released a beta of a new program, Linux Application Checker (AppChecker), that's going to make ISVs and other programmers start to love developing for Linux.

Tap into social software and add value to your application. Social networks are making it easier to take data and mash it up to create innovative new Web applications. In this article, the first of a three-part series, learn how to develop Google App Engine (GAE) applications and use Eclipse to make GAE development even easier.

Michelle Murrain is a great example of what the FOSS community is all about. She's complicated: she calls herself a "scientist turned technologist turned theologian turned writer," all blended into one person. She's also an active supporter of and contributor to open source software projects. She's not a developer, however, and Murrain would really like to see more space for people like her, with different gifts to share, in the open source community.