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“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?

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was formed almost ten years ago to safeguard the "Open Source" name. Over the years it has approved licenses and attempted some other activities while, generally, having little relevance to the wider community. It has often been seen as a relatively closed and non-democratic organization. Now one of OSI's founders is trying to get back into the organization and change its direction; the outcome of the resulting discussion may (or may not) change the direction of the OSI.

Any of the ISO and IEC national bodies can lodge a formal appeal over the next two months, before the Office Open XML standard is published. Criticism and calls for an investigation have come close on the heels of the formal announcement that Microsoft's Office Open XML file formats had received the necessary number of votes for approval as an ISO/IEC international standard.

In an interview with Reuters, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth confirmed what The VAR Guy already knew: Sun Microsystems is increasing its bets on Ubuntu Linux.

The late Charles M. Schulz, the genius behind Peanuts, could make a much more telling comment on human foibles through one of his cartoon strips than many a writer can in 1000 words. One of my favourites is the one where Lucy is attempting to persuade Charlie Brown to kick the pigskin while she holds it down. From the conversation one is able to gauge that she has done this numerous times and always pulled the ball away at the last minute, so that Charlie Brown lands flat on his back.

Quick tour of the latest DreamLinux 3.0 Linux OS. Check out the short flash video of DreamLinux 3.0 in action.

Linux has succeeded as a product only because the community that supports it has organised itself systematically to create, share, test, reject, and develop ideas in a way that flouts conventional wisdom. Successful We-Think projects are based on five key principles that were all present in Linux. Earlier I introduced three principles; here are the final two.

The third bugfix release of the KDE 4.0 series is available. KDE 4.0 is mainly targeted at users who live on the bleeding edge. As a dot-oh release it might have its rough edges. The KDE Community releases a service update for this series once a month to make those bleeding edge users' lives easier. The changelog for KDE 4.0.3 is, although not complete, quite impressive. Especially KHTML and with it the Konqueror webbrowser have seen great improvements in both, stability and performance.

The good news is that Linux has been remarkably successful at the low end of PCs, the new UMPC (Ultramobile PCs) like Asus' Eee line and Everex's CloudBook. Better still, Intel's new Atom processors were made specifically to power UMPCs and Intel's cross between a smart phone and a UMPC, the MID (Mobile Internet Device).

In this week's Distrowatch, I read about a new, small Linux distribution called SliTaz GNU/Linux that packs itself into 25 MB of space, loads and runs quickly -- and entirely into memory with 128 MB of RAM -- and can even run with 16 MB of RAM. Sounds a lot like Damn Small Linux and Puppy, but there's always room for one more project that runs like the proverbial wind on new hardware (SliTaz features a modern 2.6.24 kernel) and keeps the old hardware I use working as well as it can.

Watch out, Cisco. Move over, Microsoft. Unified communications and the Asterisk open source platform are on a collision course. In fact, a startup called Worxbox hopes to accelerate that convergence. Here’s why anyone interested in the unified communications market should care.

LXer Feature: 3-Apr-2008

This tutorial is a guideline on making your own letterhead on Open Office. Although there are letterhead templates in the wild, you may have a design in mind that you can only put together yourself. This should give you enough background information to do this on your own. Depending on how much glitter you want on it, it may take some artistic skill - sorry, I cannot impart that in this document. :)

Readers of the KDE Commit-Digest have probably noticed that Gilles Caulier is again on top with number of commits. On what does he work so furiously? Gilles is the main developer of Digikam which is under transition from KDE 3 to KDE 4 whilst simultaneously adding new features. Read more to know more about the future of advanced digital photo management for KDE and Linux.