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The facts are The Open Source software movement has gone wild. Because no one owns it, because it works great, because it is secure...it has taken on a life of it's own through the millions of people who use it. It has been growing this way for the last ten years, slowly and without any significant marketing help or understanding. It's at a point now, where it can be trusted with your data. It is at a point now where it can be used by the average business person. All that's necessary is a little encouragement to give you the confidence you need. But don't take our word for it, read the facts about why you need to move to the open source software. Read about the wildfire growth.

In response to my last entry on bug reports in Debian, and the distro's propensity to offer workarounds in the messages that follow bug reports without coming right out and saying whether or not the bug is going to be "fixed" (if it's not a bug, it must be a "feature," no?), a discussion started on LXer about whether you should run Stable (currently Etch) or Testing (Lenny). My point of view is basically that if Etch works for you, it's stable all right. But if things aren't working quite right for your hardware in Debian's Stable release, you might want to start looking elsewhere. Stable isn't going to start sprouting features out of its nether regions just because it doesn't work for you.

After timing a video comparison of a Linux and Windows version of the Eee PC, it turns out that the Linux version is far faster that the Windows version.

Linus Torvalds has released the latest version of the "stable" Linux kernel, version 2.6.25, which includes changes to Wi-Fi support, virtualization, real-time scheduling and file systems. The kernel, which was released last Wednesday, approximately 10 weeks after its predecessor, includes broader Wi-Fi hardware support and the integration of more Wi-Fi drivers, according to Linux developers.

Abas Business Solutions (PRC) Ltd. announced today that its Abas ERP system has been honorably awarded the "Winner of Enterprise Resources Planning Software" granted by Linux Pilot's Editorial at the award presentation ceremony at "Linux & OSS Best Solution 2008" held on 17th April. It's the third time that the Abas ERP system has been granted such an award, a position of pride for both Abas' employees and customers.

BIOSLEVEL looks at a SATA/SAS backplane that fits in a single 5.25" drive bay and can hold up to four 2.5" hard drives in hot swap trays. The backplane supports a 3Gbps transfer rate, and utilizes two 40mm fans in the rear to cool the drives.

Plat'Home, Japan's Linux technology pioneer, today announced its OpenMicroServerTM, a small, tough, easy-to-use, easy-to-configure solution for growing companies, is available to North American customers. Plat'Home's OpenMicroServer has been built and tested to provide high reliability for customers who do not have much extra room, and are likely to largely ignore the machine for weeks and months after initial installation.

A non-profit open source project with high-profile backers has released beta code for an open source Flash media player, with a media server in the wings. Open Media Now's Gnash player runs standalone or as a plugin, and may run better than Flash on constrained devices.

Discover an Eclipse-based application designed to help Java developers create a GUI-based, online help system or a Web-based information center. The help system can run on a server so that the content can be accessed by client machines and so that it is viewable in the client browsers.

Let’s face it: GNU/Linux software is not always easy to use. Especially command line software (at least the GUI programs have buttons and tooltips). Sometimes, the program will have a manual or some documentation at its homepage, but that is not always the case. The solution? The magical man.

Personal data safety is big business lately. There are a variety of ways to protect your identity or keep your personal information from the prying eyes of dishonest people, but Eric Wolbrom has what he believes is a unique service. Keep You Safe makes it possible for subscribers to store all their personal data securely in a virtual online "safe deposit box," and share the key with someone they trust. When Wolbrom, a self-described "security geek," finally had the chance to launch Keep You Safe, he knew that building it on Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) was the best way to keep his customers' data secure.

Based on customer experiences, this article offers a comprehensive guide to planning and executing your migration to a Linux client while minimizing disruption to your users. Learn the steps involve din migrating your environment, including organizational planning an user segmentation.

The GNU/Linux command line and desktop are both sophisticated interfaces, but they are mostly separate realities. You can drag text into a virtual terminal from the desktop, or use Edit -> Copy to move text in either direction, but by default moving files and directories between them is impossible -- a problem that often requires extra switching between them if you frequently work in both. Dragbox is designed to solve this problem and connect the two interfaces -- at least if one of them is GNOME -- through what might be described as a combination multiple clipboard and simple file manager.

I was lucky enough to catch Kurt Denke for a short interview. Kurt is actually on vacation right now; however, he still found some time to answer my questions. For those who have been living under a rock for the last week, Kurt Denke is the owner of Blue Jeans Cable; Monster Cable attacked Blue Jeans Cable on the basis of “Intellectual Property violations”. You should read Kurd Denke’s response. It’s a very enjoyable read, which makes you realise just how knowledgeable Kurt Denke is, on intellectual property law and on cables (!).

Baker College of Flint, Mich., defeated defending champion Texas A&M University and four other regional winners from across the country to capture the third annual National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, which concluded in San Antonio, Texas, over the weekend. Texas A&M finished a close second, and the University of Louisville took third. Also competing for the championship were the Community College of Baltimore County, Mount San Antonio College of Los Angeles County, and the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Tokamak, the first International meeting of Plasma was held in Milano in northern Italy over the last weekend. 14 people joined the fun and spent some days hacking on the KDE 4 desktop shell. For the most part, it was like meeting friends, only that some had never met each other in person before. The meeting was filled with small sessions, such as discussing target users for Plasma to optimise the Plasma interface for. Topics were target users, underlying technology, scripting, integration with other parts, webservice integration, visual presentation, porting of Plasma to new technology in Qt, Italian profanity and how everybody loves pizza.

One of the more interesting technologies I've been exposed to in the past year is the Force.com platform. Salesforce.com, well known for their Software as a Service CRM product, has taken the expertise they've garnered delivering a high-capacity application to a global market, and used it to offer the underlying infrastructure to application developers.

Ubuntu put out a release with the headline stating Ubuntu 8.04 Released. Only problem is that it's not true. The release isn't until Thursday.

Electricity bills got higher again? Does your computer waste too many power cycles? Or perpahs you just don’t feel green enough? In any case, this article is for you! You’ll learn how to save energy and CPU cycles with your Linux box, no matter how old it is.

Red Hat is taking a close look at the managed services and software as a service (SaaS) markets. In fact, Red Hat has been creating new positions within the company to focus on hosting partners and managed service providers. More details will likely emerge during the Red Hat Summit this June. Here are the early details from MSPmentor.