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GWT Conference Just as Microsoft wasbrushing aside claims that Volta, its latest .NET programming toolkit, is a Google Web Toolkit (GWT) clone, Google has disclosed how it plans to open the gap on rivals with the next release of its popular AJAX toolkit.

A Win/Mac developer recently asked me what I thought about his plan to create a binary of his application and sell it to interested Linux sound and music people. He asked with some trepidation, having already received a rather critical chorus of objection from some overly enthusiastic Linux users. This man's work is excellent and his software already runs nicely under Wine.

The BusyBox developers, with the SFLC, are suing Verizon on the grounds that it is illegally distributing open-source software to its FiOS customers. The SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) announced on Dec. 7 that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Verizon Communications on behalf of its clients, the two principal developers of BusyBox, alleging that Verizon has violated the GNU GPLv2 (General Public License version 2) in its fiber-optic Internet and television service, aka FiOS.

When I hear "mail merge," I usually think of personalizing letters and printing envelopes. However, many other projects can make use of mail merge. This year I tackled a new Christmas gift project by using mail merge in OpenOffice.org (OOo) to create a tear-off daily calendar, personalized with holidays and family events. Here's how.

Those of you that read my writeup about “Finding the right distro for my ThinkPad” may wonder how things went with the distros I ended up choosing after a few days of use and if I was able to resolve the few issues that I had found with them. So, as a follow up and for the benefit of those interested in trying out those distros I decided make this post.

It's one thing for a vendor to claim that Linux is ready for the embedded development market. It's quite another to have a multi-year study involving hundreds of projects and over 1,300 developers report it. Embedded Market Forecasters (EMF) has revealed in a new report how effective embedded Linux has been for developers to develop projects. The report contrasts the use of non-supported, roll your own Linux, supported Linux efforts, as well as proprietary embedded operating systems like Symbian and Windows CE.

Knowledge Tree is an open source document management system (DMS) that helps enterprise users categorize, store, index, and share documents. It offers features like metadata editing, versioning, and WebDAV access, which make it a better choice than a simple file server for sharing documents. The open source edition of the PHP-based Knowledge Tree ships under GPLv3; a commercial version with some additional features and support bundled is also available. You can run Knowledge Tree on Linux, Windows, or any platform that can run Apache, MySQL and PHP. The commercial application also has a Windows client for non-Web access to the repository.

Multi-trade International Corporation for Research of Office Software Open Format Technologies (MICROSOFT) has announced their surprise decision, that they cease to support OOXML document format (Office Open XML), acknowledging at the same time, that the ANSI-developed & supported TXT format will be a better, universal, solution. (Got it Microsoft? Got it Jasow Matusow? Any misread acronym can make sensational headline.)

E-mail clients are often loaded down with too many features. Rather than one big groupware package like Outlook or Evolution, sometimes a simple e-mail client is all you need. We look at three Linux e-mail-only clients and see how they fare against today's standards . The e-mail clients we'll look at include Balsa, KMail, and Sylpheed.

This review aims to provide readers with an in-depth treatment of the Eee, using an actual retail unit, instead of a pre-production model. This is important in a number of respects. Earlier models had a different BIOS, which, for example, did not provide full speed USB2.0 ports. Hopefully, having tested an actual retail model, the review should give a true representation of what this machine can actually do.

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. Fortunately for Linux, the support structure that gradually built up around this rogue operating system — which is now the favourite son of one-time Unix diehards HP, IBM, Novell and Sun — has dispensed with that fear.

The kernel puts limits on which functions can be used from a loadable module. But instead of an all-or-none approach, one plan would create access control lists of which modules are allowed to use which functions. The idea behind this restriction is to place limits on the reach of modules and to provide a relatively well-defined module API.

A talking penguin is the latest Linux loving gadget to hit the market. For the £89.95, the Tux Droid will sit on your desk and, using open source software, will receive and interpret an array of information from the internet. This felt-covered, gorgeous-looking gadget uses wireless technology to fetch information. The wireless is enabled by a USB transmitter (which is, of course, designed to look like a fish), and which will transmit information to the penguin from anywhere in your home.

Earlier this week we pointed you to an interview with security guru Bruce Schneier, who has previously advised Lifehacker readers on how to pick secure passwords. Turns out he'll be visiting our shores as a keynote speaker at Linux.conf.au in January.

It has taken more than two years, but the One Laptop Per Child initiative has finally released its much-anticipated laptop: the OLPC XO-1. The XO-1 costs $200 each to donate, but for a limited time — until Dec. 31, 2007 — people can avail themselves of the "Give One, Get One" promotion to give a $399 donation ($200 of which is tax-deductible). This is certainly a different business model in this "me, me, me" holiday season: Instead of buying something for yourself, you buy technology for a child who needs it, with a fringe benefit of a gift laptop for your household.

While I was browsing through the recently posted distributions on some website in search for the newest and greatest, I ran into Paldo. Curious as I am, I’ve downloaded the iso and fired-up a vmware session just to see what’s up with this distribution. And was I impressed? Well, not that much but this one has a lot of potential and it might someday impress all of us. But let’s start with the beginning.

Nigerian schoolchildren no doubt appreciate the innovative little machines that are trickling into Africa via Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child program. But IBM thinks the developing world needs a little more processing power to cross the digital divide--about 14,000 times more, by the company's estimation. The computer giant announced Tuesday it will donate one of its BlueGene/P supercomputers to the Center for High Performance Computing in Cape Town, South Africa.

[Only vaguely related to Linux, but good news nonetheless - Sander]

One question that people who don't know how open-source businesses work is: "How do you make money from open-source software?" SourceForge.net has a new answer to that question: sell services and support to customers using an eBay-like market. SourceForge.net, with millions of monthly visitors, is already one of the world's largest Web sites for open-source development and distribution. What it didn't have, though, was any way for its uses to cash in on their open-source projects. On Dec. 6, that changed forever. Today, SourceForge launched an online marketplace for technology professionals to buy and sell service and support for open-source software.

A recent Forbes review gushed over Zonbu's Linux-based Zonbox network PC. Joining the chorus of other positive reviews, in "Hassle-Free PC" Daniel Lyons writes that he was "blown away" by the performance, stability and ease of use of the eco-friendly, power-thrifty mini-PC. "Zonbu is riding two of tech's hottest trends: open-source software and 'cloud computing,'" writes Lyons. Later, after coming up with only one criticism (his printer wasn't supported), the reviewer concludes, "Zonbu can't edit movies or manage a big photo library, but as a second PC for the kids, the kitchen, or the weekend house where you just need to browse the Web, it's a killer product."

As a standard practice since Zenwalk Linux 2.6 (with the exception of 4.0), a live CD for Zenwalk Linux will be released, usually 4 to 6 weeks after the release of the standard Zenwalk Linux edition (the installation CD). With a Zenwalk Linux live CD aka Zenwalk Live or just ZenLive, you can also enjoy the goodness of the standard Zenwalk Linux edition without installing it to your hard disk. Like its standard Zenwalk Linux edition, the live CD also comes with a broad spectrum of applications but without the bloat. It's one application for one task! Right now, I will review the latest offering from Zenwalk.org, the Zenwalk Live 4.8.