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When I thought Microsoft was going to extend XP's lifetime to better slug it out with Linux on Ultra Mobile PCs and Mobile Internet Devices, I was afraid Linux was going to have to fight hard for the low-end of the desktop. Now that we know that only XP Home is going to have a longer life and Microsoft is going to have to contort itself over what systems can and what systems can't get it, I'm much happier. XP Pro was much more troublesome in my mind.

Google's Android platform is designed to drive fragmentation of mobile operating systems, creating an industry in which Google's cross-platform applications will thrive. Why? The search-engine giant wants to ensure there's no equivalent of Microsoft Office in the mobile phone world. So says Sanjay Jha, chief operating officer of Qualcomm's chipset division QCT. "Google wants fragmentation in the industry [and] is putting a lot of resources behind Linux" he told us.

Ever run into the issue that you saw a cool new app on KDE-Apps.org and could not find a binary package for your favourite KDE version on your favourite KDE distro? The openSUSE Build Service allows creation of binary packages quite easily, so you can do the work yourself and help other KDE users who run into the same problem. If you are interested in learning how, the openSUSE community are organising Packaging Days II, which starts tomorrow.

Already known for its development of a free Flash player, the Gnash project is now the nucleus of a much larger effort. Called the Open Media Now Foundation (OMNF), the group's goal is to encourage the development "of an open media infrastructure," according its home page. Registered as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization in the United States, the new organization is actively seeking corporate members, although it accepts donations from individuals as well.

Ok, as you probably know by now I'm a Gentoo geek and immediately setup my new ZaReason UltraLapSR with Gentoo. Since my UltraLapSR has a discreet video card, it's only fitting that I should bling it out to show off the power of my laptop and Compiz-Fusion to people. :)

Recently I looked in on the project Web site for a small application I use, only to find the wiki completely filled with spam. The project itself was clearly in disrepair, and the code abandoned for six months or more. I wondered: how many other apps that I use have halted development without my realizing it? I decided to look back at the projects I've written about over the past year to see which ones are no longer with us.

Reuters is now reporting that Sun is the first of the world's major server computer makers to certify that its hardware works with Ubuntu Linux. The only problem with the Reuters report in my personal opinion is that it's not exactly accurate and is somewhat misleading.

The LiMo Foundation has announced the first version of its Linux based mobile alternative to Google's Android is "complete". Except that it isn't. Although release 1.0 - announced at CTIA in Las Vegas, Nevada - provides a basic mobile Linux platform, it comes with limitations. It includes C and C++ versions of the middleware software development kit. Those who want Native, Webkit and Java SDK's will have to wait until later in the year.

Nate: The flaw you discovered was in Adobe Flash, was this truly a cross-platform attack? Shane: Yeah, there’s a stack issue, where a type is accepting 3 parameters when it is defined to accept 2, possibly some polymorphism/name mangling bug, but either way, this object get’s called through the 3rd invalid/uninitialized memory that winds up jumping wherever we had pre-filled memory to. Nate: So then, do you have exploit code for all three of the operating systems, or are you certain that you could’ve written exploit code given enough time?

A tiny but strategic Silicon Valley company is helping Microsoft to certify open source applications for Windows Server 2008. It’s a super-smart move by Microsoft, The VAR Guy believes, as the software giant strives to compete effectively with Linux and ensure Windows Server remains popular in the age of open source. Here's the scoop.

Red Hat Network Satellite server allows users to locally host subscribed content from Red Hat Network and custom content in user-managed channels. An example configuration could include a server syncing content updates directly from RHN, while another mission-critical server could be disconnected from the external network, yet still receive updates via manual syncing. In the latter case, these offline servers must be manually updated regularly.

The organizers of the 3rd Annual Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) 2008 in Poland are making an urgent plea to raise $20,000 to pay for conference expenses and travel of open source developers so they may attend and have a productive face-to-face conference. The funds are critical to keep the momentum of success from previous conferences and to pave the way for the future development of open source graphic applications. There are 16 short days left to raise the necessary monies to ensure the developers’ travel is paid so they may attend this important meeting.

“Microsoft did sponsor the benchmark testing and the NT server was better tuned than the Linux one. Having said that, I must say that I still trust the Windows NT server would have outperformed the Linux one.” –Windows platform manager, Microsoft South-Africa

Red Hat Inc and Novell Inc will soon face more competition from a small rival, Ubuntu Linux, in the market for open-source software programs that run server computers. Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu Linux, said on Wednesday that Sun Microsystems Inc would soon certify that his software is compatible with some Sun products.

The Linux kernel is a restless beast, and must continally evolve and change. Especially in ways that mystify us poor end lusers. A recent wrinkle, as of kernel version 2.6.20, is changing the /dev names for ATA devices, so that all ATA and SCSI devices are named /dev/sd*. This is a result of using the shiny new libata subsystem. Carla Schroder guides you through the new nomenclature in this tutorial.

This guide explains how to integrate XCache into PHP5 on a Debian Etch system (with Apache2). From the XCache project page: "XCache is a fast, stable PHP opcode cacher that has been tested and is now running on production servers under high load." It's similar to other PHP opcode cachers, such as eAccelerator and APC.

While desktop search engines like Beagle and Recoll can quickly find any file on your hard disk, they can't help you organize documents and files into neat and easy-to-manage collections. That's why we have tools like digiKam for managing your photos, BasKet Note Pads for keeping tabs on your notes, and Referencer for filing and tagging your documents. The latter is not only a handy tool to herd your documents, it also makes an excellent research and bibliography tool.

Renoise is a digital audio workstation (DAW) based on the design principles of the module tracker. It supports instrument plugins, effects, MIDI input and output, synchronization capabilities, and parameter automation. Several weeks ago a first version of Renoise for Linux appeared. The article presents some screenshots of Renoise 1.9.1 running under Linux.

Have you ever peeked into one of those bazillion .el files in your Emacs installation's lisp folder and wondered what it meant? Or have you ever looked at a GIMP script .scm file and scratched your head over all the parentheses? Lisp is one of the oldest programming languages still in common use, and Scheme is a streamlined dialect of Lisp. Many universities use Scheme as the language to introduce students to the Computer Science curriculum, and some of their teaching methods are based on the assumption that Scheme is the one language they can count on their students knowing.

Has anyone else noticed an increasing number of Linux newbies who seem to think that Ubuntu is Linux and Linux is Ubuntu?