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During a tutorial today on-stage at linux.conf.au, Sun Microsystems and Frontline donated a server to the KDE project, available for shipment within hours. Aaron Seigo, Plasma developer and KDE e.V President, accepted a certificate from Ross Cunningham of Sun Microsystems and David Purdue of Frontline on behalf of the KDE project.

Perhaps The VAR Guy pursued the wrong career. He’s blogging for free, but could be making $229 per hour or so — that’s nearly $460,000 a year — troubleshooting Windows Vista PCs for his neighbors. That may sound a little far fetched. But check out this amazing math, using some quick cost estimates from The Geek Squad. Consumers are actually paying Geek Squad a hefty fee ($129 to $229) to set up and optimize their Windows Vista PCs. Can you imagine calling Linus Torvalds to re-boot Linux? The VAR Guy thinks not. Here’s a look at the fees Geek Squad is charging to keep all of those poor Windows Vista customers up-and-running.

The really big problem in document formats is what's going to become the next office document format: Microsoft's proprietary Open XML or OpenOffice's ODF (Open Document Format). A far more minor but nonetheless very annoying problem is what do you do about Microsoft's ClearType Collection typefaces: Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia and Corbel?

The blogroll at Denny's blog -- Denny being committed to running OpenBSD as a full desktop operating system -- continues to point me toward interesting spins on the various flavors of BSD. Since OpenBSD is the only one of the three major BSD systems (which include NetBSD and FreeBSD) to run on my VIA C3 Samuel-based test box, I wanted to try one of the projects to which Denny linked right away. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to run the three main BSD projects and their various offshoots -- more trying than doing, actually, but I always want to try what's new.

Back in 1999, free software believer Joshua Rand and his friend Oscar Mondragon were talking about the changes they predicted were coming for the Internet. Not long after that, the bubble burst and things did change, for the worst, many said. "We didn't subscribe to that theory," Rand says. "We saw the Internet becoming a platform for applications and services long before the term Web 2.0 was coined. With the growth and proliferation of things like Web-based email, the next logical step was, why not everything else? Why not more personal productivity tools and office tools?" That was the beginning of Sapotek.

General Parallel File System (GPFS) on Linux provides Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) services that let administrators collect SNMP data about the health of a GPFS cluster so that problems such as disk failure can be quickly identified. This article provides a method for basic verification of SNMP in a GPFS cluster.

Using VNC to remotely access your desktop, applications, and documents sounds like a great solution when you are out and about, but it has a few significant drawbacks: you have to leave your machine turned on, the VNC protocol is not secure, and often you need a dedicated VNC client to access your desktop. Ulteo, the company started by Gaël Duval of Mandriva fame, is set to offer an alternative solution. Ulteo gives you access to a full-fledged KDE desktop hosted on the company's own servers while taking care of the behind-the-scenes stuff. While the service is still in beta and by invitation only, I had a chance to take it for a spin, and I found it promising.

China is one of the fastest growing nations on the Earth, and Red Hat Inc. is taking advantage of that fact. Red Hat, the Linux and open-source distributor, is focusing on the continent of Asia, expecting gains of more than 50% in growth.

It looks like Asus is going to seriously expand the "Eee PC" product line. The new family of low-cost, Eee products will include the E-DT (desktop), E-TV, and E-Monitor

I was pleased to learn that the Los Angeles Daily News' Rick Orlov -- L.A.'s most esteemed City Hall reporter -- recently bought an ASUS Eee-PC, and in his quest to make it run as well as it can, has begun reading this blog. Well, if hundreds of rambling posts about my Linux and BSD highs and lows helps, I'm glad to be of service.

The Linux desktop may be moving forward slowly in the United States, but it's a vastly different story in Europe. Today, Jan. 30, Chris Kenyon, Canonical's director of business development, announced on a Canonical blog that "the Gendarmerie Nationale [the French national police force] announced the migration of up to 70,000 computers to Ubuntu over the next three years."

Sun Presentation Minimizer (SPM) represents free software's answer to PPTminimizer. Designed for OpenOffice.org 2.3 or StarOffice 8 Impress and released under the Lesser GNU General Public License, SPM is an extension that creates a wizard that guides you through reducing the size of your presentation, making it easier to transport and, on some systems, quicker to run. Those who present large slide shows -- especially graphics-heavy ones -- will find it a well-designed and effective addition, although several features require more work.

Trend Micro is suing Barracuda Networks over its use of the free open source antivirus software, ClamAV. If it wins, open-source advocates fear it threatens all users of the free software and will legitimize the use of patent law to attack OSS. Following months of legal threats issued to Barracuda Networks, Trend Micro is suing its rival over its use of ClamAV--a product maintained by U.S. open-source company Sourcefire--on the grounds that Barracuda Network's use of the software in some of its own products infringes a patent held by Trend Micro on applying AV via gateway proxy servers.

[Here is your overblown article title for the day - Scott]

A great editorial article discussing the eruption of Linux-related FUD brought on by huge corporations that fear the little penguin that could.

The article by Keyto explains how to run SLAX-a 6.0 (RC 6) on a USB memory stick straight away. But what many similar guides don't mention, it actually explains how it works underneath.

The Free software sector and its twin branch, open source, have grown quickly in recent years. Yet there are still factors that, if changed, would further speed adoption.

Think about the differences between stories and facts. Between generating interest and pursuing knowledge. Between grabbing attention and building out what we know. Then think about the connections between the freedom to build code and the freedom to inform one's self and others. Because the former is a model for the latter.

Alex Brown will be the "Convenor" of the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) that will run from February 25 through 29 in Geneva, Switzerland. In that role, he will have a variety of important powers, including interpreting various vague Directives and other ISO/IEC JTC1 rules and practices that were created for what might be described as kinder, gentler times (not to mention for shorter specifications).

Libferris allows you to index and perform full text search on a number of file formats, including PDF, manual pages, and office documents. The recent availability of packages of libferris and its dependencies for Fedora, Ubuntu, and openSUSE makes it simpler to use the library to provide a file server search interface for the Web. Libferris was initially created to provide a virtual filesystem interface, similar to GnomeVFS and KDE's KIO. Over time libferris has gained sophisticated support for indexing and searching filesystems

The French gendarmerie has blown a big framboise at Microsoft by ditching Windows XP in favour of Ubuntu. The paramilitary police force is to switch 70,000 desktops over to the Linux OS, two years after switching its browsers to Firefox, and three years after dumping MS Office for OpenOffice. Deputy director of the force’s IT department Colonel Nicholas Geraud said the change will be gradual, according to the AFP. 5,000 to 8,000 machines are to make the switch this year, with the rest swapping over the next four years.