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Without question, OOXML falls far short of being a universal office document exchange format. Considering Microsoft's enormous backward-compatibility commitments, I'd go so far as to say OOXML's own authors would probably agree ODF would be a superior format on which to base a new application. But with or without the ISO's blessing, OOXML is substantially more open than are Microsoft's legacy binary formats. As a user of OpenOffice.org on Linux who works in a mostly Microsoft-formatted world, I'm somewhat of a stakeholder in the ODF-vs.-OOXML horse race, and I'd like to see OpenOffice.org take advantage of this marginal boost in openness

Take charge of your editing session within Emacs and use it to your advantage. This tutorial is the fourth in a series, and shows you three areas of Emacs that control some aspect of the editing session: various command-line options, the register, and bookmark facilities for setting and saving positions and data. Knowing how and when to use these features, and what tricks are possible with them, are important topics in power editing.

It's tax time in Australia. Three weeks into the new financial year, now is about the time when people have all their documentation ready to give the government its yearly pound of flesh. But for Linux users there's no joy again. What greets me at the ATO's website is this information: To lodge tax returns online, one needs a PC running Windows 2000 or XP. And the ATO advises further, "...because Windows uses security components of Internet Explorer, use any version of Internet Explorer 6."

On July 5, Microsoft quietly released a "Covenant to Customers" to clear up how it is handling its patent deal with Linux distributor Linspire. Instead, it did little but puzzle and annoy members of the Linux community. If you read Microsoft's memo, you'll find that Microsoft's patent protection only applies only to "Linspire Five-0 and successor offerings" on a desktop. Server use is specifically forbidden. Microsoft also categorically rules out "Freespire and any other software offerings that include the Linux operating system for which Linspire receives no revenue."

The staging site for the new Firefox Support knowledge base is now up and running, and we’re looking for people to help contribute content. We have an initial list of articles we would like created for the alpha version, so feel free to create an account, assign yourself to an article, and create it.

Battle for Wesnoth is an amazingly addictive 2-D turn-based strategy game with some role playing game elements thrown in for spice. It runs under Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Wesnoth can be played solo, using one of the several single-player adventures (campaigns) available, or over the Internet with other people.

[I wish I had the time play it more, very cool game. - Scott]

HP and MIT have formed an independent organization to support the work of digital archivists who use the DSpace open source archiving software. Called the DSpace Foundation, the new group will provide a forum and a focus for users of the software - who include over 100 universities, museums and companies - said Nick Wainwright, the DSearch project research manager at HP Labs in Bristol.

[Not directly Linux related, but still of interest I think. - Sander]

SAP AG has certified the SAP NetWeaver platform on RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) Advanced Platform 5. The two companies say that the combination of RHEL 5 and NetWeaver offers a complete solution stack through the integration of Red Hat Global File System, Cluster Suite, SELinux and further technologies for high availability, storage management and security.

I am a Linux professional for last more than 4 yrs, and had used many a more Linux boxes so far. Mainly I had worked on RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, Mandrake, and few others. But just about 2 months back, I had got an opportunity to have AsianLinux as the operating system for my PC. I was informed that it is a variant of Linux that is coming with most of the multimedia libraries for playing and editing the multimedia files on my PC. That was the main feature, which drew my attention to this Particular distribution.

[Forgive the author for some bad grammar. - Scott]

I am in the middle of installing Slackware on my test box. So far all the Slack fans are right -- it's not hard at all, and dammit, it works. It's like my Linux Bar Mitzvah (insert your own joke here).

Wal-Mart will sell a sub-$300 "back-to-school" PC this fall pre-loaded with Microsoft Windows Vista and OpenOffice.org productivity software. The Everex GC3502 PC is based on a 1.7GHz Via C7-D processor, and will be available later this year preloaded with Ubuntu Linux.

The Pyro project has launched its "Pyro Desktop," a new Linux application with the lofty goal of "true integration between the Web and modern desktop computing." Pyro offers an interesting new approach to deploying Web-based applications on the Linux desktop, reminiscent of Opera's and Vista's widgets.

Neuros Audio reports that a Google Summer of Code project ported UPnP software to its Linux-based "Open Source Device" (OSD). Users hook the OSD to their stereo, network, and TV, and use infrared remote controls to browse and play their digital music collection. The OSD's new UPnP software was apparently created by Pau Minoves "Progeny" Rafanell, with mentorship from Ugo Riboni. The software lets the OSD browse and playback media files on local area network-based UPnP servers -- for example, Windows Media PCs, TwonkyVision servers, and home NAS devices made by Infrant, Buffalo, and others.

Aptly-named Slackintosh version 12, just released, updates this unofficial version of Slackware Linux that targets PowerPC-based Macintosh computers, such as the iBook. Based on a 2.6.21.5 kernel, the distribution's brief release statement noted that version 12 includes KDE 3.5.7 and glibc 2.5.

The Apache Pluto project is the reference implementation of the Java Portlet Specification. Find out how combining the Pluto project with Apache Geronimo's Java Platform, Java EE platform creates a highly flexible and powerful environment for building customizable and manageable systems using portals and portlets.

[The screenshots in this tutorial are from Windows, but it works the same under Linux ofcourse. - Sander]

The Xen virtual machine monitor was recently merged into the upcoming 2.6.23 Linux kernel in a series of patches from Jeremy Fitzhardinge. The project was originally started as a research project at the University of Cambridge, and has been repeatedly discussed as a merge candidate for the mainline Linux kernel.

[First Iguest and now Xen. And there already was KVM in the kernel. How many virtualization techniques does a man need? - Sander]

There's plenty of consternation floating around the Steam forums this morning as open sauce geeks get het up over Valve's persistant refusal to port its popular Steam game-delivery client to something a little more penguin-based. The community is so irate that moderators in the Steam forums are threatening to ban users who consistently whine about the issue. The issue, moderators say, is closed - and so the fan's mouths should be, too, it seems.

Rusty Russell's lguest was recently merged into the upcoming 2.6.23 Linux kernel. The merge comment describes the project, "lguest is a simple hypervisor for Linux on Linux. Unlike kvm it doesn't need VT/SVM hardware. Unlike Xen it's simply 'modprobe and go'. Unlike both, it's 5000 lines and self-contained."

Remember the 1980s worries about how the "forking" of Unix could hurt that operating system's chances for adoption? That was nothing compared to the mess we've got today with Linux, where upwards of 300 distributions vie for the attention of computer users seeking an alternative to Windows. DistroWatch's stats page has as apt an explanation for this phenomenon as you find anywhere: "A Linux distribution is like a religion. If you've ever tried to suggest to another person that his or her choice of a distro might not be the best, then you know what I mean."

[So much FUD this week. Scott should have a field day in his weekly round-up. - Sander]

For many users, the xorg.conf file, which configures the system resources, graphics card, keyboard, pointing device, and monitor for a computer running the X Window System, is an exception to GNU/Linux's do-it-yourself credo. Users who think nothing of editing /etc/fstab or /etc/hosts.allow will shy away from xorg.conf for fear of breaking their systems, relying instead on tools such as the KDE Control Center or Debian's dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg instead. But learning your way around xorg.conf not only teaches you a lot about how your system operates -- it can also come in handy when the graphical display fails and you either can't remember the handy command that does the work for you, or you're working with a distribution that isn't blessed with it.