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Yes, Microsoft is finally polishing its Software as a Service (SaaS) strategy. In addition to playing catch-up against entrenched SaaS companies like Salesforce.com, Microsoft must also deal with a growing number of open source providers — from SugarCRM to MySQL and Sun — that have jumped on the SaaS bandwagon. Here's the scoop.

In all prior Fedora releases fullyvirtualized Xen guests had to boot via the QEMU BIOS. This means booting from a CDROM, harddisk, or Network PXE. Paravirtualized guests could always boot directly from a kernel and initrd. This allowed for fully automated guest installation since it allowed the tools to pass arguments straight into anaconda. KVM fullyvirtualized guests also support direct kernel booting.

For January and February, we chose some of the staples of open source security (GnuPG and Nmap) as the tool of the month. And deservedly so; both have just celebrated their ten-year anniversary in the open source realm, a rare feat for any open source project, much less one founded on security. But for the month of March, we wanted to move ahead and change gears. This month's Open Source Tool is no newbie for sure, but we bet that most of you reading haven't heard of it. While most Linux security tools deal with digital security, this month's tool is one of the few to cross that divide;

As the new leaves of spring bud in the Low Countries, the organisation of Akademy is also growing. This will bear fruit in August as the worldwide KDE community gathers in Sint-Katelijne-Waver, Belgium at the De Nayer Institute to celebrate and consider the post-KDE 4.0 world. Now that the KDE 4 technology platform is in place, this year's Akademy will focus on bringing the pillars of KDE to applications, research efforts around KDE, and work on non-traditional platforms for the desktop.

Selling FOSS – most customers don’t care if its FOSS or proprietary – they just want to get the job done. So its easy to pitch to small/medium scale business. The low-up front costs is useful, and think about the insurance aspect (i.e. Others can work on it, even if you exit the industry).

Inside BashStyle-NG, a strong idea struggles to be born. On one hand, if you use the bash shell at all, you will likely find several of BashStyle-NG's customization options worth trying -- all the more so because they are only a few mouse clicks away. On the other, a poorly designed interface makes using the program a matter of guesswork, despite the fact that the latest release is supposedly the third release candidate for version 5.0.

The immense popularity of sites like YouTube has unexpectedly turned Flash Video (FLV) into one of the de facto standards for Internet video. The proliferation of sites using FLV has been a boon for remix culture, as creators made their own versions of posted videos. And thus far there has been no widespread DRM standard for Flash or Flash Video formats; indeed, most sites that use these formats simply serve standalone, unencrypted files via ordinary web servers. Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software.

Ubuntu fans will be pleased to hear that issue 10 of Full Circle, the Ubuntu community magazine has been released. Highlights in this issue include an easy guide to installing Linux Mint, tips on compiling from source code, creating your own server and ripping a DVD with Acidrip. But the one you don’t want to miss is Ronnie Tucker’s review of the ultra-small Asus EEE PC.

While Dell is yet to make an announcement for Australia, the PC maker's UK office has declared: "Dell Answers Customer Calls For Linux In Europe". Unless of course you live in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey ...

For a number of years now Tectonic has hosted a list of open source and Linux usergroups based in Africa. Usergroups are, after all, the lifeblood of free and open source software and the fact that the number of groups was always growing was good news for free software in Africa. But lately the list of active groups appears to be dwindling. So where have all the usergroups gone?

Moving to Linux used to be a big deal. Sure, it was cheaper, more reliable, and more flexible -- but who did you turn to when things went wrong? In an enterprise world that had grown up with the idea that Unix needed to be complex and expensive -- and that Windows was a quick-and-dirty Plan B -- the idea of getting a robust, scalable operating system for free just didn't click for many years.

If you like your browser interface to be simple, try these extensions designed to unclutter Firefox. Compact Menu 2 and two alternative extensions collapses all the menus into a single drop-down button, creating room for you to add buttons such as Downloads, History, and Bookmarks to the menu bar. Organize Status Bar lets you rearrange all the items displayed on your status bar, or even hide some.

Ubuntu is the favourite distribution of Linux for use on both desktops and servers, according to a poll of Australian open source enthusiasts.

Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The delayed FreeBSD 7.0 was finally released last week and there is a lot to be excited about - especially if you deploy this excellent operating system on servers. But how about the desktop users? Is this latest version ready to take over our workstations? Read our first look review to find out. In the news section, the Debian release team contemplates the inclusion of KDE 4 in "Lenny", KNOPPIX springs to life at CeBIT with a new live DVD, Mandriva continues its relentless march towards version 2008.1, and Fedora discusses improvements in NetworkManager. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the DistroWatch February 2008 donation is Frugalware Linux, a community distribution from Hungary. Happy reading!

The popular open source content management system Drupal is going commercial, reports InternetNews. A new company called Acquia, which is led by Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, plans to offer a commercial version of the content management system based on the free version but with a host of additional modules.

The long-awaited KDE4 is finally out the door after an extended gestation and a rescheduled launch date. In this inside look at KDE4, we see what all the fuss is about.

Australian SMEs aren't paying nearly enough attention to Linux considering the top priority for their IT managers is to "reduce costs", but despite the prevailing attitude, it won't take much for open source to have a far greater impact in the near future, according to research released today.

The Bittorrent network is becoming increasingly popular and perfectly legal. It allows to download the latest movies, music or, to say the least, almost every Linux distribution available.

LXer Feature: 2-Mar-2008

In this week's LXer Roundup, speed up your Linux with Preload, KDE 4: Wow Factor Fully Engaged, learn 10 good UNIX usage habits, Richard Stallman steps back from Emacs, Best Buy Sells Linux, several articles concerning Microsoft plus audio conversion tools and Improve Security with PAM.

The Mandriva development team yesterday announced the first release candidate for Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. Codenamed Serapias, this release includes all-new artwork, improvements to the software management tools, WPA-EAP support in the network configuration tools and the latest pre-release of OpenOffice.org 2.4