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Yes, a judge has confirmed that Novell owns the copyrights to the Unix operating system, but that doesn't mean the company plans to start suing people for using Linux. It will leave such behavior to companies that don't own the copyrights. Like SCO. "We have absolutely no intention of using our Unix copyright ownership to attack Linux," Novell spokesperson Bruce Lowry told The Reg. "We've had those copyrights for the past 14 or 15 years. The fact that the court has reaffirmed them doesn't mean we're now going to change the way we operate. We've never indicated we would use those copyrights against Linux - and we wouldn't. In fact, we want to defend Linux."

Linux Mint, a community Linux distribution that includes some proprietary elements for a better "out of the box" user experience, is now available in an edition with KDE as its desktop environment. This 3.0 release is based on Bianca KDE Mint 2.2. Like that edition, Cassandra KDE Community Edition is compatible with all Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn repositories. Instead of the GNOME 2.18 interface that Linux Mint 3.0, Cassandra, the KDE version uses, the KDE 3.5.6 desktop. For those who want to live life on the 3D side of the Linux desktop, it also comes with Beryl 0.2.1 and the Beryl-Manager.

If you’ve been working with Linux very long, you’ve probably encountered dd, the deceptively simple utility for copying a stream of data from here to there. You may have used it to zero a disk before letting it leave the building, to benchmark io hardware by writing a certain number of bytes, to put a disk image on a floppy or usb drive, or even to back up an entire disk.

When Sun looks to highlight the strongest features of the Solaris operating system, DTrace always appears near the top of the list. Your editor recently had a conversation with an employee of a prominent analyst firm who was interested, above all else, in when Linux would have some sort of answer to DTrace. There is a common notion out there that tracing tools is one place where Linux is significantly behind the state of the art. So your editor decided to take a closer look.

The topic of information sharing among US intelligence agencies, the FBI, and other federal agencies has attracted attention since 9/11. At Defcon XV, I had the opportunity to ask Tony Sager, chief of the National Security Agency's Vulnerability Analysis and Operations Group, about information sharing within the agency.

Since Linux, Windows and Mac are effectively equal, why doesn't the "Free as in Beer" of Linux trump the $200 price tag of Windows like a free offer does in every other marketing situation? Because Windows Is Free. The impact of pirated software on free software, by Dave Gutteridge on August 15, 2007, is an excellent exploration of the marketing effects of pervasive software piracy.

LXer Feature: 17-Aug-2007

An interview with IBM's Vice President of Open Source and Standards about their Open Source Strategy, the recent pledge of its patents for more than 150 open software standards, his take on the ODF vs. XML issue, and much more in The LXer Interview of Bob Sutor.

We are excited to announce the release ofMirth 1.6! This is a significant upgrade which includes both critical bug fixes and new features. The functionality and stability of existing connectors has been improved to fully integrate with even more third-party systems. The user interface has also been enhanced to make channel development and maintenance even easier. Additionally, this release includes NCPDP support, real-time connection monitoring and plug-in functionality.

Unicon Systems, the developer of a Linux based platform of choice for mobile applications, has been awarded The LinuxWorld 2007 “Best of Show” Product Excellence Award.

Maybe you've heard of VMware. You know, EMC's baby, huge IPO, Bloomberg called it the hottest tech stock since Google in 2004, drove a member of our staff mad? Virtualization has clearly become an industry darling, and VMware controls 55 per cent of that market. This kind of monster success tends to paint a big ol' target on a company — and a volley of the slings and arrows that accompany outrageous fortune are already on the way.

Amarok 1.4.7 was released with improved collection backend, new streams, altered icon and bugfixes. *** The annual Desktoplinux.org Survey is under way. *** MEPIS released a KDE 4 Beta 1 live DVD using packages from Kubuntu. *** The videos from Lugradio Live are up including Ben Lambs' Conquering the Desktop with KDE 4. *** Finally, following the 10th anniversary of the free desktop last year, congratulations to another project which has gained double figures in age, but whatever did happen to those Scheme applets?

San Diego -- Mainframe programmers and sysadmins get more than just sales pitches and informational talks at SHARE this week -- they also get real-world training. I sat in on a number of educational sessions and hands-on labs at the conference, taught by engineers from IBM, Novell, and independent software vendors.

The first release candidate for Gimp 2.4 has been released. Among the many improvements in this upcoming version, new version of several of the most used tools and an improved interface with redesigned menus and new icons for tools.

After I wrote an article on optimizing disk performance, some readers commented that tweaking settings was just part of the job. They pointed out that you can get more speed if you also compile your kernel, adjusting it optimally for your specific hardware and needs. Compiling the kernel isn't the challenge it used to be; nowadays the process is streamlined, and you don't have to do much but pick your choices and key in some commands.

One month ago LINUX For You magazine made a call to the Linux/OSS community to send in questions it has for Linus Torvalds. We were overwhelmed by the amount of questions we recieved. It took us a whole night to sort out the best ones. The final setlist? 35 questions. We did not number them just so he doesn't get frightened by just that number. In fact, we had his answers within hours; makes me think we could have sent him a few more? Anyway, without furthur ado, here's Linus Torvalds: blunt, excellent and descriptive...

Once again, Linux Journal leads the way in idiotic, pointless misogyny. And they wonder why they have no women subscribers.

This article describes how to integrate DSPAM with embedded ClamAV into a mail server based on Postfix featuring virtual users and domains, i.e. users and domains that are in a MySQL database. DSPAM is a scalable and open-source content-based spam filter. The setup shown here is suitable for Debian Etch servers.

"I will predict that virtually every open-source company (including Red Hat) will eventually be acquired by a big proprietary software company.", Thus spake Tim O'Reilly in the comments to one of his other posts. In other words, why don't I just give up, sell out, and go home? I guess I would if I thought that Tim were right. He's not, not in this instance.

Sonos has integrated Sirius radio playback into its Linux-powered whole-house audio equipment. The commercial-free service can be trialed for 30 days by selecting a menu option on the Sonos Digital Music System's PDA-like controller (pictured at left), the company said. Sirius is best-known for its satellite radio product, which competed with XM Radio before the companies announced a merger earlier this year. However, Sirius also offers an Internet radio product.

The good part of *NIX-like systems is that some basic concepts are extremely well designed, starting with the filesystem philosophy and the security metaphor. Therefore, using Linux or BSD on your home desktop or on your laptop instead of Windows is not only a question of ideology or price — it's a matter of good taste. There are however a few places where something is under-optimal, not because GNU/Linux or *BSD are following "ancient *NIX principles", but simply because *NIX operating systems were designed in the times of the mainframes and minicomputers, where everything was a server, and usability issues like those raised by nowadays desktop/laptop computers were not considered.