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Linux is sometimes belittled for having inferior applications, but that's simply not the case. Take DVD rippers, for example -- a plethora of them work on Linux machines. With so many to choose from, which is the best?

It seems that the £200 ultraportable Asus Eee PC can do no wrong. The size of a paperback, weighing less than a kilogram, with built-in Wi-Fi and using Flash memory instead of a hard drive for storage, the Eee PC has been winning positive comments not just from hyperventilating hardware reviewers, but also from ordinary people who have actually bought it. The combination of good functionality and out-of-the box ease of use with a price so low that it's almost at the impulse-buy level could prove problematic for Microsoft. Until now, there has been no obvious advantage for the average user in choosing GNU/Linux over Windows on the desktop, and plenty of disadvantages.

Dear Windows Professional Service Pack 2: I didn't want to tell you this in person, because I thought it might be too complicated, and might take too long. After all, we've been together for a long time, almost five years and running now. I know, i know. I know you so well; your control panel, your installation procedures, even when you get mad and go all blue screen on me; what can I say, you kinda grew on me. But to be honest, things have been going downhill for a long time now.

Increasing number of software applications are going the free/open-source way these days. Looks like more and more software companies and developers have seen the barriers of closed-source programs and have now fully realized the significance of freedom. Here are some of the most notable software packages which were published under a proprietary software license but later released as free and open source software.

Software developer Unison has launched what it claimed is the world's first fully-unified communications suite based on Linux. Advertisement Announced at CeBIT, the suite (also simply called Unison) combines IP telephony, email and instant messaging with diary, address book and presence capabilities, all in a single Linux server. It is available free as a public beta.

I cannot tell the details of the meeting, but I can tell a conversation we’ve had (myself and another Brazilian delegate) with a person, at the beginning of the lunch break on Friday. I will disclose this conversation because the person has identified himself as a member of the ECMA, a member of a national delegation present at the BRM but didn’t said that he was speaking on behalf of anyone (the protocol used there), so I understand that this was a conversation that is not covered by the scandalous “Law of Silence” imposed on us all.

IDC is reporting that Windows server growth hit 6.9 percent in Q4 2007, bringing it to 36.6 percent market share. Linux trounced Windows' growth at 11.6 percent to hit 12.7 percent market share. Microsoft owns the market, but Linux owns the future. Therein lies the rub of the tale behind much of Microsoft's fear and loathing of open source.

In a 2005 report the Government quango Becta showed that schools could effect considerable savings by making use of Free Open Source software such as Open Office. In their study they simply looked at “like for like” software replacement using existing networks and computers. Since this study we have seen the emergence of the new breed of ultra-portable Linux-based computers aimed squarely at the education sector and the inexorable build of Web 2 services such as Google Apps.

Joining the array of low cost Linux offerings such as the Asus Eee PC, the Everex Cloudbook , Elonux announced the Elonux One a sub 200 dollar Linux laptop targeted to go on sale in the UK starting in June. We saw similar announcements in the last couple weeks from Acer, who stated that “”Between the second and third quarters, we will have products that address ultra mobility and low-cost segments.” In addition Dell stated that it will “introduce more low-cost notebooks in Asia.” which will augment its Vostro 1000 notebook for sale in China which runs Red Flag Linux. This is a key direction for the industry as it fills out a market segment not previously addressed, particularly at this price point in the notebook computing world.

Caroline is a 2006 Volkswagen Passat, converted by a team from the Braunschweig University of Technology to be an autonomous vehicle. The car was a finalist in the legendary Darpa Grand Challenge, a US Defence Department-sponsored competition held every year or two in which driverless vehicles battle it out to see which can complete a set course in the fastest time.

Want to see what a non-Windows-based operating system developed by Microsoft looks like? If you are willing and able to sign a non-commercial, academic Shared Source license, look no further. Microsoft on March 4 made the few hundred thousand lines of source code for Singularity Version 1 available for download from its CodePlex site. Microsoft made the announcement at its Microsoft Research TechFest 2008 event in Redmond, Wash.

The Cobra programming language has been made available via open source, according to its author, Charles "Chuck" Esterbrook. Heavily influenced by Python, Cobra runs on .Net, Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris, and is said to combine productivity enhancements from a variety of languages.

I've heard of quite a few people still running Debian Sarge -- the stable version of Debian before Etch went stable in April 2007. As per Debian policy, support for what is referred to as "old stable," in this case Sarge, is slated to last for a year after the next Debian release is declared "stable" (Etch). So now we're bumping up on March 31, 2008, and Debian is telling users about the end of updates for Sarge.

The European Commission is investigating the process under which a key Microsoft document format could be adopted as an industry standard - a move that would carry significant commercial benefits for the software company. Officials at the European Commission's competition directorate have written to members of the International Organisation for Standardisation, asking how they prepared for votes in September and later this month on acceptance of Microsoft's OOXML document format as a worldwide standard. The ISO process has been widely criticised, however, with some members of national standards' bodies accusing Microsoft and its rivals of attempting to influence the vote.

The KDE community has released another update to its cutting edge KDE 4.0 desktop. KDE 4.0.2 has, along with the bugfixes some new features in Plasma. The panel can now be configured to sit somewhere else than at the bottom and UI options for changing its size have been added.

Earlier this month at JBossWorld in Orlando, Florida, Linux.com had the chance to sit down with Craig Muzilla, Red Hat's new vice president of middleware, to talk about his job, the middleware marketplace, and the open source community.

Anyone who has thought that, as nice as the Linux-powered One Laptop Per Child computers are for the target market of third-world children, they'd also make a lot of sense for U.S. kids too, is in good company. The mayor of Birmingham, Ala., Larry Langford, had the same thought and the result is that the city will be deploying 15,000 OLPCs to its school system.

Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie tried to clarify Microsoft's software plus services internet strategy. And guess what, it involves advertising and Yahoo!. Ozzie opened Microsoft's Mix 08 offering developers the "big picture" on a strategy he promised would culminate with massive software and service launches at Microsoft's mega Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October.

[Still sounds like they need to buy Yahoo more than want to buy Yahoo to me. - Scott]

When you want to customize the look and feel of your Linux desktop environment, you can find many resources for altering window managers and interface widgets, but working with icons has always been more of an issue. Now you can get help with icons from a new program called Tango Generator. The major Linux desktop environments (such as GNOME, KDE, and Xfce) adhere to an icon theme specification from freedesktop.org.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the service that converts hostnames and domain details into the IP addresses required for application to communicate. This article looks at the basics of DNS setup, how servers and requests are distributed, and exchanged and how to set up and keep a DNS environment running smoothly.