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FUDCon Raleigh 2008 was a weekend of hacking, planning, discussions, coding, and general mirth. Over 200 members of the Fedora community were in attendance, and a tremendous amount of work was accomplished that will pay off in the Fedora 9 release. Rather than recap the entire event myself, I have collected up some of the blog posts about FUDCon that appeared on Fedora Planet during and after the event. Check back tomorrow for a FUDCon video.

Zenwalk Linux 5.0 for desktop was released on the 18th of January 2008 with the continued focus on simplicity and optimum performance. This major release also boasts the out-of-the-box availability of three Intel Pro Wireless and one Intel Wireless WiFi Link firmwares. This is also the first time that the modern HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) will be implemented thus replacing the old Zenwalk hotplug system. In keeping with tradition, the latest softwares are provided.

Open source content management systems (CMS) come in various shapes and sizes and can manage everything from your blog to your enterprise. These systems aren't difficult to deploy, but if you don't know your Apache from your MySQL, you'll run into a steep learning curve. If you have a deadline staring at you, or just want to get a CMS up and running as fast as possible, hop over to BitNami, a site that packages ready-to-consume "stacks" of popular open source CMSes. Just grab your favorite one, double-click, and you're done!

It's been a few years since the Free software, Turn based strategy game: The Battle for Wesnoth, made it's humble beginnings. Ever since then, little by little, not only has the code and game play been improving but the artwork has made huge leaps in quality. So take a dive in the world of Wesnoth and see for yourself some of the best pieces of original/traditional art the Free software world has produced.

Red Bend Software, the market leader in Mobile Software Management and Firmware Over-the-Air (FOTA) updating solutions for mobile devices, and Trolltech®, the leading cross-platform software development company, today announced they have formed a partnership to bring over-the-air software component management to Linux mobile phones that use Trolltech's Qtopia® application platform.

The Apache Web server (Apache) comes with a powerful logging framework. In the default configuration, Apache logs all errors to an error log and all access requests to an access log. The default level of logging is sufficient for analyzing traffic patterns and for getting basic information about errors, but it may be inadequate for troubleshooting purposes. Familiarity with all the logging features can help you troubleshoot the Web server or applications hosted on Apache.

It’s one small step for Dell, and another great leap for Asterisk — the open source VoIP phone system. Dell plans to promote Fonality (a major Asterisk proponent) to small business customers seeking IP telephony systems. It’s a landmark development, folks. Here’s why.

A nest of poisoned Web sites has been quietly attacking unsuspecting visitors using an arsenal of thirteen different exploits. If the site visitor has javascript enabled and is vulnerable to any of those exploits, then in no time at all their system will be compromised with a Trojan not yet recognised [sic] by many popular anti-virus packages.

It happens to the best of us. We forget where we put things. Car keys. Flash drives. Yes, sometimes we even forget where certain files are on our computers. We can't really help you with the car keys and flash drives (although we inexplicably find things like that in the refrigerator here), we can help you out with finding missing files.

The extraordinary Richard Stallman, prophet of free software, always makes a deep and lasting impression. With his long brown locks, flowing beard and an unexpected air of innocence, he appears Christ-like, even if a slightly portly one. That's how he struck me when I first encountered this iconic figure five years ago for a magazine interview, and like everything to do with the feisty founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), it turned out to be amusing and unpredictable.

This is an editorial about file conversions. It starts with a story about Free Software Magazine and our struggle with article formats, and continues explaining why the world needs to get rid of Office Open XML, which could create more problems than the Microsoft monopoly itself. What I experienced with Free Software Magazine while converting (which, admittedly, wasn’t really that big a deal) would be nothing compared to what the whole world will have to deal with if OOXML became “the” file format “normally” used to exchange office documents.

This is a look at the state of Linux through the eyes of Google Trends, Google’s highly useful search trend analyzer. Though looking at search statistics can never give a complete picture, this gives an interesting perspective to how things are going for Linux, especially when viewed through the eyes of such a dominant and pervasive search engine as Google.

Today marks ten years since Netscape Communications Corporation announced its intention to release the source code of the then in-development Netscape Communicator 5.0, heralding the beginning of what would become the Mozilla project. At the same time, Netscape stopped charging for Netscape Navigator 4.0 and Netscape Communicator Standard Edition 4.0.

Linux laptop users suffering from Apple MacBook Air envy now have a chic, hot laptop to call their own: the Dell XPS 1330n with pre-installed Ubuntu 7.10. On Jan. 23, Dell quietly announced that it was releasing the Dell XPS 1330n to the European market. In addition, for the first time, Dell is allowing its customers in Spain to order this and other PCs with pre-loaded Ubuntu Linux. The Ubuntu-equipped XPS 1330 will be available to North American customers the first week of the February.

Hard-working KDE Input/Output (KIO) slaves perform much of KDE's functionality. KIO slaves provide consistent access to different resources, such as filesystems, network protocols, and search functions, making them accessible to all KDE applications in a standard way. For example, you can open a remote FTP session and copy, move, rename, or delete files as if they're on your own box, or connect via Secure Shell (SSH) and use remote files as if they were local. Even browsing the Web uses a KIO slave.

The venture investments flowed to open source startups today, with new money arriving at Greenplum, Alfresco, and Zenoss. The biggest chunk, US$27 million, went to Greenplum, which develops business intelligence software based on the open source Bizgres software project. Zenoss, which sells open source software for managing computers and networks, announced US$11 million in funding, its second round. Alfresco, whose open source software is used to keep a handle on the large quantities of documents companies must reckon with, announced US$9 million in third-round funding.

One side effect of Linux marketing by Red Hat and others has been the widespread belief that people transitioning from expensive old Unix servers running on proprietary chipsets to Linux on x86 do so mainly to get Linux. I don’t believe that; I want to venture a total speculation: that the same forces about Linux eating Sun’s lunch have created a situation in which MacOS really has started to eat the Linux desktop lunch.

Linux Desktop Garage from Susan Matteson is a great resource for those looking to learn the Linux operating system. From the basics of learning the Linux interface to using some of the most popular applications on it, Linux Desktop Garage will help you get up to speed regardless of your knowledge or experience with this powerful operating system.

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales and Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth are backing a scheme to make publicly funded education materials freely available on the Internet. The backers of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, announced on Tuesday, said the initiative is designed to echo the disruptive effect that open source had on the proprietary software world by opening up the development and distribution of educational materials.

Microsoft has just announced it will contribute millions of dollars to train students and teachers worldwide how to use its software. That means less exposure to Linux for our children and a continuation of the dependence on the Windows XP and Vista. Of course, before receiving any of this funding, the school must be using Windows XP or Vista. Microsoft has used this tactic in the past to crush competition, including its decision to give away Internet Explorer to starve Netscape out of the industry.