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When a partition that was previously an ext3 partition is converted to disk dump, the next time the system will boot, it will show a "Token is too" error. This problem occurs and leaves the system in an unbootable state. This is because yaboot tries to to boot from a partition of type “Linux” (Type 83). This error does not occur if the partition is labeled as swap (Type 82).

Learning a new language cannot be complete without a few 'real world' examples. 'Hello world!'s and fibonacci sequences are always nice as an introduction to certain aspects of programming, but soon or later you crave something meatier to chew on. 'Ruby by Example: Concepts and Code' by Kevin C. Baird provides a wealth of knowledge via general to specialized examples of the dynamic object oriented programming language, Ruby. Want to build and mp3 playlist processor? How about parse out secret codes from 'Moby Dick'? Read on!

Zend pitches PHP to the enterprise. PHP is wildly popular in the open source community, but less so in the enterprise. These things are hard to measure, but one indicator is job vacancies.

According to a message posted over the weekend on the Full-Disclosure mailing list, the latest version of Firefox, 2.0.0.5, contains a password management vulnerability that can allow malicious Web sites to steal user passwords. If you have JavaScript enabled and allow Firefox to remember your passwords, you are at risk from this flaw.

A global survey of open-source enterprise users of Alfresco software has found that deployments of Red Hat Linux have grown twice as fast as those for Novell SUSE Linux since Novell signed its controversial patent and interoperability agreement with Microsoft in November 2006. While Alfresco did not specifically ask community members the reason for their Linux choice, the findings are "not a coincidence and, while we can't be certain, customer unhappiness with the Novell-Microsoft deal is probably the most likely reason for that," Howells said. "There was also a backlash against Microsoft about its patent position during this time."

Alfresco open source barometer survey of 10,000 community members worldwide demonstrates strong preference for deployment on Linux over Windows; Red Hat use growing much faster than Novell SUSE after controversial Microsoft patents deal. “The survey found that the U.S. is leading open source adoption globally,” said Dr Ian Howells, CMO of Alfresco Software. “We believe the Global 2000 is seeking innovation and better value for their technology investments whereas in Europe open source adoption is often driven by governments seeking better value for their citizens. The research also showed that the U.K. lags behind in the adoption of open source suggesting less government emphasis compared with other European countries such as France, Germany, Spain and Italy.”

Have you looked at the HCL (Hardware Compatibly List) for your preferred Linux distribution lately? Do you see it? Exactly, it's a mess. Even with a strong community effort working to keep the list updated and as fresh as possible, it's nearly impossible to make the list worth the page it's rendered on. Today, I'm going to be exploring one idea I have for making this a lot simpler and more effective. Rather than tasking hundreds to thousands of people into making this a reality, why not take a page from the bug reporting side of things?

While OpenOffice.org allows you to save multiple versions of a document, that feature has a few drawbacks that limit its usefulness. For starters, saving all versions in the same file equals putting all your eggs in one basket. More importantly, this approach makes it difficult to share versions with other users and let them keep track of changes made to a document. One alternative, a full-blown version tracking system or a dedicated document management solution, is overkill if you only need a simple way to keep tabs on document versions and allow other users to keep track of them. A compromise solution uses OpenOffice.org to maintain an RSS feed of document changes.

I do not honestly care which OS each of you choose to run. For some of you, it will be Windows, others OS X. And for a growing number of the remaining minority, your OS of choice will be one of the Linux flavors available today. But how would you feel if Microsoft Windows was powering the voting booth in which you were to select important elected officials? Would you, knowing of Microsoft's past security record, feel confident that using this OS and not being allowed to inspect the code, feel safe knowing that these machines could very well help to dictate the future of your perspective countries? Don't feel guilty, I don't really like it either.

As you may know, V1, the INCITS Technical Committee that had charge of the US vote on Microsoft's OOXML, failed to reach consensus on either approving or disapproving the specification. As expected, Microsoft has turned to the full INCITS Executive Board in an effort to salvage the situation. Between now and Labor Day, a complicated series of fall-back ballots and meetings has been scheduled to see whether the Executive Board can agree to approve or disapprove OOXML, in either case "with comments."

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth says the next long term support release of Ubuntu Linux will be in April next year and that the organisation aims to release long term support releases every two years in an effort to woo enterprise users.

The One Laptop Per Child project, aimed at providing an educational computer for developing countries at a cost of $100, has begun production of hardware. The first mass produced laptops are due to come out in October this year.

Company says there is still a long way to go before a final decision is made on the adoption of OpenXML as an ISO standard.

Births benchmark for AMD, Intel and the server crowd. Not afraid to help itself while it helps others, VMware today rolled out a public version of its homegrown virtual server benchmarking tool.

E17 is a still being developed version of a graphical environment called Enlightenment. E17 has been developed for a long time already. Updates have been appearing often, but they used to become obsolete in a few weeks after releases. Has anything changed suddenly? No, nothing really. Stable release of the environment is not planned anytime soon, but this of course isn’t a problem for us to have a glance at what Enlightenment has to offer at the moment.

Welcome to this year's 30th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! As you might know Ladislav is still on vacation and I'm here with you for one more week. So here we go. Happy reading!

We continue to explore the Linspire/Microsoft affairs and we identify some discomforting facts. As we stated before, personal benefits were possibly (even probably) part of all those recent deals.

"Was it the Dell laptops deal? The costless CD shipping from Shipit? The launch of the fully-free Gobuntu? Or will it be the liberation of the proprietary Launchpad platform? No, good people. Ubuntu’s best move ever has happened quietly, and it’s on its homepage."

Just bumped into this question which asked "Which open source clinic management system you will recommend which has Patient ,Drug Management and also synchronization with clinic inventory?".

As expected, Linus Torvalds released the2.6.23-rc1 kernel two weeks after the release of 2.6.22, ending the merge window, "and it has a *ton* of changes as usual for the merge window, way too much for me to be able to post even just the shortlog or diffstat on the mailing list".