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"It is time for "Free Software" to face the suits, and show them that there is more to what they now know as "Open Source" than Open Source!"

Microsoft's Sam Ramji slammed the door on virtualizing Microsoft's newest desktop operating systems (XP and Vista) on Linux yesterday. In a speech at LinuxWorld, the director of Microsoft's open-source software lab claimed that "we haven't seen significant demand for Linux applications on the desktop or for desktop virtualization on top of Linux."

LinuxWorld does tend to bring out the press releases, and here's one more. As you'll see from the release from the Linux Foundation reproduced below, I'm taking on a more formal role at LF in addition to being an At Large Board member and outside counsel. And I'm very pleased to share the news that Karen Copenhaver, who many of you will already know as one of the best known national experts on open source licensing, is also joining the management team.

First it was called DTV, then Democracy Player, and now it is Miro. Whatever you call it, the Mozilla-based, cross-platform, open source video player is now in public release. Miro differs from playback front ends like VLC by offering integrated content-finding and content-management tools. If you think that's a meaningless distinction, think again.

The Golden Penguin Bowl is a perennial LinuxWorld event frequented by inner-circle types and shunned by the humorless. The format is simple: two teams, the Geeks and the Nerds, answer a series of not-serious technical and movie/TV trivia questions and possibly engage in other feats of derring-do, such as a robot face-off. One team wins, the other team loses. The fans rarely riot, but you never know.

There is about two months left until the final release of Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, but today marks the release of Ubuntu 7.10 Tribe 4. New in this alpha release is GNOME 2.19.6, desktop search capabilities through Tracker, fast user switching support, deskbar applet, OpenOffice.org 2.3, AppArmor by default, and a smooth shutdown splash screen. Next week is the feature freeze, upstream version freeze, and the first artwork deadline for Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon.

Last month, Fortune magazine ran an interesting article about how Microsoft got its groove on in the massive Chinese market by striking deals with China's government and how Microsoft's success in China appears to be coming at the expense of Linux and open-source software.

Two days ago, Sun announced their latest processor, called “UltraSparc T2“, or - for the rest of us - “Niagara 2″. While the chip itself is pretty interesting - with its 8 cores, which can handle 64 threads simultaneously - the real highlight is that the company will open-source its design, like they did with the predecessor of that CPU, the UltraSparc T1 already.

run-parts is used (on Debian systems, anyway) to run the scripts in /etc/cron.daily (hourly, weekly, etc) on the appropriate schedule. I had trouble this week with a Perl script I’d dropped into /etc/cron.daily failing to run. Ran fine from the command line, of course. Odd.

The company certified six hardware configurations to run Oracle Enterprise Linux. Certified products include those made by Compellent Technologies, Dell, Egenera, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Pillar Data Systems and Unisys. The announcement was made in conjunction with the LinuxWorld conference this week in San Francisco.community.

Linux has evolved to a pretty decent Desktop platform these last years. It features a fast, stable and productive work environment for various purposes. Linux (and especially Ubuntu) is doing his job as a everyday desktop system very well - maybe even better than Windows in some cases.

There's a major new release of the FOSS project LinuxMCE that includes whole-house HD PVR, movie, music and photo server, integrated telephony and smarthome.

Red Hat Summit 2007 collected hundreds of Linux users all in one place–many of them experienced Red Hat Certified Engineers® (RHCE). And somewhere between all those smart people walking around–and our video crew shooting footage–the idea for some video tips was born. This tip is from William Bradley.

Donations play a crucial role in supporting Free and Open Source Software projects. At times readers will write in to share their positive experience with a utility or program or a distribution that I have written about. Now don't confuse them with your average technical-bent-of-mind Linux user. These are accountants, home-office businessman, and even carpenters and plumbers, who've saved a lot of money thanks to open source software. And they have one question in mind -- how do I help the person behind the program?

I used to think of myself as something of a rare bird -- a philosopher and software developer with a keen interest in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movements. But as I discovered at last month's North American Computers and Philosophy (NA-CAP) conference in Chicago, there are many with similar interests.

This guide describes how you can use the CD/DVD burning application K3b to convert songs from an audio CD into MP3 or Ogg files that you can use on your MP3 player, for example (if you choose the Ogg format, your MP3 player must support it).

Last month we looked at the ALiveNF7G-HDReady from ASRock, which was a great budget motherboard that had integrated NVIDIA GeForce 7050 graphics that made it suitable for an HTPC or multimedia setup and it came topped with Gigabit LAN support and IEEE-1394 Firewire. We are back with ASRock today as we look at their ConRoe1333-DVI/H motherboard. ASRock's ConRoe1333-DVI/H is based on Intel's 945G Chipset and is compatible with Intel 1333MHz Core 2 Duo processors, uses GMA 950 graphics, and is home to many more features.

FUD recipe, it’s delicious:

1) Create a completely misleading title. 2) Make a mountain out of a non-existent molehill. 3) Proclaim insider knowledge not possessed by more experienced individuals. 4) Carefully craft statements based on false premisses. 5) Spread the FUD around and bake @ 350.

And whatever you do, DO NOT ADD FACTS, Facts, facts!

[He makes a couple of points, but you still know which side of the fence he is on. - Scott]

Fedora and Debian make building a custom kernel and packaging it for rollout a simple process. Part 2 of the Linux kernel compilation series examines the unique steps in getting these popular distros' set up with a custom kernel.

The free electronic program guide (EPG) data that Zap2it Labs currently provides to many MythTV users is scheduled to shut down on September 1. Today MythTV users learned how much a replacement service offered by Schedules Direct (SD) will cost.