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UK firms are lagging behind in the adoption of open source software, suggesting less government emphasis compared with other European countries such as France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Alfresco Software, an open source enterprise content management firm, made the claim in its barometer survey conducted between April and June 2007 using opt-in data provided by 10,000 of the 15,000 Alfresco community members.

Nowadays, people are turning to Web-based applications as replacements for desktop applications. Web-based office suites, mail clients, multimedia apps, and general productivity tools are all extremely useful now, but standard Web browsers aren't always the best option for running applications. To provide a more suitable tool for Web-based apps, Mozilla Platform Evangelist Mark Finkle has been working on WebRunner, a site-specific browser (SSB) that's designed to work exclusively with one application at a time. It's not finished yet, but it's already showing promise.

You need to run a job at midnight, daily, or weekly, but you would rather be sleeping, or enjoying life some other way. This tip helps you use the cron and at capabilities to schedule jobs periodically or at a single future time, so you can sit back and let routine tasks happen automatically and consistently while you enjoy life.

a.k.a. "You can't even imagine how good it is" "Sabayon is an Italian dessert made with egg yolks, sugar, a sweet liquor (usually Marsala wine), and sometimes cream or whole eggs. It is a very light custard, which has been whipped to incorporate a large amount of air." Source: Wikipedia.

"Lguest is an adventure, with you, the reader, as Hero," began some documentation for lguest recently submitted by Rusty Russell. The documentation continued,"but be warned; this is an arduous journey of several hours or more! And as we know, all true Heroes are driven by a Noble Goal. Thus I offer a Beer (or equivalent) to anyone I meet who has completed this documentation. So get comfortable and keep your wits about you (both quick and humorous).

Monit is a utility for managing and monitoring, processes, files, directories and devices on a UNIX system. Monit conducts automatic maintenance and repair and can execute meaningful causal actions in error situations.

The software will be available as an open-source project under the GNU General Public License Version 2.

The Classmate PC, a low-cost notebook targeting emerging markets, was jointly demonstrated by Mandriva and Intel earlier this month at the KDE-sponsored aKademy 2007 conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Featuring an educational interface, Mandriva's Discovery 2007 Linux is based on an Intel Mobile Processor ULV900.

Prominent Linux kernel developer Con Kolivas recently quit and left it all behind. According to Kolivas, Linux is burdened with "enterprise cr@p" and the kernel developers are oblivious to the performance problems of Linux on the desktop. In this interview, he talks about what pushed him to quit and how Microsoft has succeeded in crushing innovation in personal computing.

A global survey conducted by Alfresco has found some interesting trends within the use of open source software among enterprise users that show promise for the future of open source. It was found that there was a strong preference for deployment on Linux over Windows. It also found that Red Hat use has grown much faster than that of Novell SUSE following Novell's Microsoft patents deal.

Earlier this month, Intel and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project announced that Intel has joined the OLPC board -- a surprise given the previously reported acrimonious relationship between the two organizations. We spoke with Will Swope, Intel's vice president of corporate affairs, about the reconciliation and what it means.

The efforts of Microsoft to pressure the Linux community over alleged and unspecified patents is akin to "patent terrorism", according to a local executive for Sun Microsystems.

At the O'Reilly Open Source Convention today, Software Freedom Law Center director Eben Moglen threw down the gauntlet to O'Reilly founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly. Saying that O'Reilly had spent 10 years making money and building the O'Reilly name, Moglen invited O'Reilly to stop being "frivolous" and to join the conversation about software freedom.

The question of Canonical's success seems answered, for now. A better question could be, how will Canonical avoid the pitfalls of success that have befallen other strong software companies?

One Laptop Per Child's XO (commonly referred to as the $100 laptop) is designed to change the world by bringing computing resources to children in the developing world. But the many innovations in the XO may also end up changing the world of technology.

Pyro is a new desktop environment for Linux which utilizes Firefox to run web applications alongside native desktop applications.

Version 3.0 of the Debian-based schools Linux distribution Skolelinux has been released. The latest release features support for more than 50 languages and includes a range of educational software.

Portable applications can come in handy when you are on the move, but there are situations when using them is not an option. For instance, before you connect an external hard disk or a USB stick to a public computer, you have to ask permission. More importantly, even if you get permission, you can never be sure what kind of nasty viruses and malware you will be getting on your storage device. But why bother with portable applications at all when you can have your very own Web-based operating system bundled with a few essential applications? That's the promise of eyeOS -- an impressive and surprisingly useful open source Web-based OS.

Red Hat is growing and executing well. Financial analysts expect Red Hat to hit $517M this year (fiscal 2008, ending Feb. 2008), and $631M in fiscal 2009. At this pace, Red Hat should cross the $1 billion revenue mark in fiscal 2011. Red Hat may well be the gorilla in the Open Source marketplace. But after everything is said and done, that marketplace is tiny in comparison to the total software market. Just imagine a Microsoft that could offer customers a choice of Windows/.NET, Linux/JEE or, and here's the magic, BOTH. The fact is most customers have heterogeneous environments, and those that don't today, will likely in the future.

[It's hard not to laugh out loud when reading stuff like this – Sander]

This week on Open News Microsoft's Patent Covenant Woes, Mozilla Protects Itself From IE, and No Steam For You.