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On April 4, CERT put out a scary advisory about the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). This advisory raises some interesting issues on when such advisories are appropriate, what programmers must do to write secure code, and whether compilers should perform optimizations which could open up security holes in poorly-written code.

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), Linux's own baked-in virtualization program, has been gaining popularity. Now, Qumranet, the company behind KVM, is releasing a commercial virtual desktop called Solid ICE based on KVM technology. Solid ICE is designed to run multiple virtual desktops in a KVM on servers. While the servers need to be running Linux 2.6.20 or higher, Solid ICE can be used to deploy Windows or Linux desktops on either thin clients or repurposed PCs. The servers must run on x86 processors that support virtualization extensions. These include Intel's VT (Virtualization Technology a.k.a. Vanderpool) and AMD's AMD-V (a.k.a. Pacifica) technologies.

A year and a half ago, the excellent Linux music player Amarok added extensive support for Magnatune. The programmer, Nikolaj Hald Nielsen, did this on his own initiative, simply because he thought it'd be a neat thing for his favorite music player to have, and because he liked Magnatune's business philosophy.

Ah, how the mighty have fallen. In what must have been gross oversight, Red Hat is pitching proprietary software on its website under the banner of "No vendor lock-in." The way Red Hat and IBM make it appear, simply running one's software on an open platform like Linux magically removes the proprietary lock-in of the application.

As Juror No. 7, schoolteacher Vince Dunn sat a foot or so away from Hans Reiser, the Linux programmer whom Dunn and 11 other panelists convicted of first-degree murder on Monday. In an interview Tuesday with Wired.com, the 61-year-old fifth-grade teacher recounted his six months of jury duty, some of which required sitting next to the 44-year-old defendant's immediate right during his 11 days on the witness stand. Hans Reiser is escorted from the courtroom following a Tuesday court appearance setting his sentencing date. "I was looking at his eyes," the Oakland man said in a telephone interview. "He was faking it."

The most obvious change from last year was that there weren't any repeated presentations and each time slot was original yielding more presentations than last year. Another big change is that two of the presentation rooms (Haskel 108 and 103) had a video camera in them with live streaming and archiving of the content. ustream.tv was responsible for the streaming and archiving and some folks from the BTC did all of the camera work.

Formula One motor racing is no longer about famous car marques, its about precise science and using technology to shave another fraction of a second off a lap time, and Linux is playing a pivotal role in helping the race teams achieve this. As a technical sport motor racing demands of its participants a close understanding of the technologies that can help them. F1 motor racing is probably second only to the aerospace industry in the application of aerodynamic simulation and wind tunnel technology. It is a testament to the rapid advance of Linux in high performance computing that most teams in Formula 1 have been using Linux systems in their aerodynamic and engine workshops for a number of years.

I read Negroponte's statement presenting the OLPC XO as a platform for Windows in the most ironic circumstances possible: during a week of preparing, under a deadline, to migrate personally to an XO. I made this decision for one specific reason: freedom. The IBM T23s that I have used for many years are adequate in practice, and the system and applications running on them are entirely free software, but the BIOS is not. I want to use a laptop with a free software BIOS, and the XO is the only one.

Ksplice is an interesting open source project out of MIT that automates the process of applying security patches to the Linux kernel without rebooting, and it’s getting notice by the Linux Foundation.

Guess what? You can now use Microsoft to monitor/manage Linux and Unix servers as well as open source databases and webservers. Even more surprising is the fact that Microsoft is using open source to enable their management of open source servers and applications. It's all part of the new Miicrosoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 with cross platform extensions.

Twitter is a popular social networking utility that's gaining popularity as a micro-blogging tool. Registered users can post messages -- also called Tweets -- via the Web interface, but many prefer to use desktop applications that offer additional functionality and move Tweeting out of the browser entirely. Qt Twitter Linux is a barebones KDE client developed with Qt and C++. Since it was built using Twitter's APIs, messages sent via this tool appear instantaneously in Twitter's timeline as if they were sent directly from the Web-based interface (all Tweets show what app the sender uses by default). While Qt Twitter Linux doesn't come with handy features such as search and archive, it's great for dashing off quick messages.

The KDE Community today announced the immediate availability of KDE 4.1 Alpha1. With the soft feature freeze in effect, KDE 4.1 provides a first preview of what can be expected from KDE 4.1, due in late July this year.

With libraries of thousands of fonts to handle, designers need a way to quickly locate fonts and organize them into meaningful categories -- such as by the project that requires them -- and to disable fonts when they are not in use so that they don't clog system memory. Although as recently as two years ago the GNU/Linux desktop lacked a font manager that met all these needs, it now has four that either meet them or are likely to.

Client-side migrations are challenging due to their large scale, the potential uniqueness of each client system, and the direct impact on users. Learn the steps involved in migrating your environment to that of a Linux client. This article, Part 3, focuses on the next step: technical planning, after the organizational planning for desktop migration presented in Part 2.

If you want to be notified when and how a Web site has changed, you can turn to either netstiff or urlwatch to keep and eye on things for you. Both of these tools monitor Web sites for changes and allow you to see a diff-like output of exactly what has changed. You can also use netstiff to monitor FTP sites for changes.

Microsoft Tuesday said it plans to become a major management platform vendor to battle the likes of CA and HP and said it would extend its System Center software to encompass Linux and Unix-based machines.

Bill Karpovich, CEO and co-founder of the open source system management company Zenoss, talks about the origins of his company, why IT management is broken, and the role of Zenoss in a world of cloud computing and software as a service.

As thousands -- perhaps millions -- of users seek to avoid Windows Vista, a new myth about Windows XP is emerging. But the myth, much like Windows itself, is full of holes.

Participation by big open source vendors is helping attract new interest in Linux user groups in Asia. Khairil Yusof, president of the Free/Open Source Software Society (FOSS) in Malaysia, said in an interview that the group's members have benefited by sharing knowledge with others from different technology backgrounds during its monthly meetings. New members are able to listen to talks ranging from a wide spectrum of topics such as desktop usage to running an open source software business, as well as "personally meet local and international developers", said Yusof.

There is an air of disquiet again on Planet GNOME - and once again the reason behind it is the way the site is administered. For the second time in six months, a developer from the GNOME desktop project has openly accused the project's media spokesman, Jeff Waugh, of being unresponsive to requests for changes in a GNOME service that Waugh looks after.