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Management software is one category where Microsoft has never quite measured up to competitors. Redmond hopes to change that with an unlikely weapon: using code from the OpenPegasus project to extend its System Center suite to Linux and Unix environments. Cross-platform management is the No. 1 customer request for System Center, and using open source code to get there represents recognition by Microsoft that it's far from a Windows-only world. It's also a significant move in the company's bid to be seen as a legitimate top-tier choice for enterprise management.

Apple Inc.'s ploy to gain browser market share by pushing Safari to users with an update tool normally used for security fixes failed to boost its overall share, a Web metrics company said yesterday. Instead, Safari's share fell last month to 5.5%, down from March's 5.8%, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer increased its dominance by growing to 76% from March's 74.8%. It was the first time Internet Explorer (IE) gained share since October 2007.

LXer Feature: 04-May-2008

With the release of the newest Ubuntu this week we saw a fair number of articles related to it including The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment and Ubuntu man says Microsoft's about to 'swallow a hand-grenade'. We also have two LXer Features, Introduction to Secure Web Data Input and Accurate market share statistics and The $60 Billion dollar question for your reading pleasure. Also, The Top 75 Open Source Security Apps, KDE in Korea, Magnatune gives money to Open Source, How to Make People Love Linux and we have several Microsoft related articles as well.

Brazil often makes Linux-related headlines, the latest being the adoption of KDE in Brazilian public schools. It’s clear that Brazil is enamored with Linux, but why? This is an important question for Microsoft since emerging markets are key to sales growth. Microsoft’s Annual Report 2007 reported that “impressive growth included India, China, and Brazil which all delivered revenue growth that topped 40 percent”, which is much faster than growth in developed countries. These markets are also friendly towards Linux and pose significant challenges for Microsoft. This post is my take on the reasons for Brazil’s fondness of Linux. I speak for Brazil since I was born and raised there, but I think much of this applies to the other BRIC countries and emerging markets in general.

YOPER (Your OPERating system) promises to be a i686 optimized, fast linux distribution. The latest beta 3.1 was released to public testing on 22-April.I decided to try YOPER only because it claims to be faster.

In his article "Why the Linux world should embrace the BSD's", Steve Lake proposed a closer cooperation between Linux and BSD. Although I have the utmost respect for BSD and what its developers have accomplished, I don't see what good it would do. I think his reasoning is flawed and the arguments he uses are - at least partially - invalid.

The following letter was sent by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang regarding Ballmer's decision to drop his company's bid to acquire Yahoo.

This tutorial shows how to set up an Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04 LTS) based server as a spamfilter in gateway mode. In the end, you will have a SpamSnake Gateway which will relay clean emails to your MTA. You will also be able to view your incoming queue, train your SpamSnake and carry out a few more advanced operations via MailWatch.

I recently had a project that needed to do a whole lot of number crunching, and then create a PDF to present those numbers and a line chart as well. This presented two problems for me - how to create a PDF from code, and how to create a chart for use within that PDF. I can say that I have had some success and wish to share with you the process. I'll talk about the PDF side of things in this article, and post another soon with details on how I handled the chart. But an overview of the chart solution is included below.

Particularly if you are new to the Ubuntu community, there are some sessions you should really look at.

.Microsoft Corp. withdrew its $42.3 billion bid to buy Yahoo Inc. on Saturday, scrapping an attempt to snap up the tarnished Internet icon in hopes of toppling online search and advertising leader Google Inc. The decision to walk away from the deal came after last-ditch efforts to negotiate a mutually acceptable sale price proved unsuccessful.

I want it. MacX, the software that Apple itself used to sell to get an early-'90s Macintosh to do an X session from a Unix box. Sure, there are solutions for OS 9 Macs, and any OS X box can easily be made to do this. But System 7.6.1, which is what I run on my Powerbook 1400cs, that's another thing entirely.

What strategy is needed to really spread desktop Linux to average home users? Here are some ideas that just might work.

The openSUSE team is proud to announce the second Beta release of openSUSE 11.0! New changes include countless bug fixes, as well as the import of the new openSUSE 11.0 artwork for login, splash screens and more. The live installation should work, but there are several known quirks, so be sure to check the most annoying bugs list before proceeding.

Last weekend we exhibited at LinuxFest NorthWest. It was pretty exciting, since this was the first time we’d actually had a booth and marketing schwag at an event. Hopefully it won’t be the last.

Software RAID is RAID implemented with software - no additional hardware such as a RAID controller is needed. Thus, software RAID is a good starting point to start getting some hands-on RAID experience. Also, software RAID is independent of proprietary management software - maintaining a software RAID works the same way on all machines that run Linux. However, there is something to think about too: when considering software RAID, think about performance.

The news from Sun Microsystems' quarterly financial report was not reassuring. After talking about restructuring the company for more than a year to better compete in the marketplace, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced a $34 million net loss or 4 cents per share in the fiscal third quarter, compared with a net income of $67 million or 7 cents per share profit in 2007.

There are some in this world who believe that Linux is the king of all operating systems. In some ways I agree with them because Linux certainly is a big player in the server world. It may lack in market share in the the desktop sector, but that doesn't mean it's a lesser operating system. The GPL has been instrumental in this as Linux has grown, starting with a simple, barely functional kernel, and slowly, patiently evolving into the giant it is today.

LXer Feature: 03-May-2008

In the introductory article for this series I painted my intent out in broad strokes. Now my task is to determine the absolute minimum data set I need to extract from the user input form. That is, what is sufficient to build dynamic content into the Open Source Today (dot) org site. The constraints I use may seem arbitrary, however, you too should use whatever is afforded you to simplify your tasks.

Mozilla Messaging, a subsidiary of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, yesterday patched five bugs in its Thunderbird e-mail client to fix flaws that were disclosed more than a month ago. Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 patches vulnerabilities in the Firefox engine, which the open-source e-mailer uses to render HTML. The same holes were closed in late March for the Mozilla Web browser.