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Attendees at BEAWorld in Beijing this week can get a sneak peak at WebLogic Server 10 before it becomes generally available in the first calendar quarter of 2007. The new release will implement the latest Java specifications including Java Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5) and Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 (EJB 3.0), as well as feature several additional enhancements designed to help customers simplify the development of applications and services while achieving next-to-zero downtime. Among these features is enhanced support for Web Services, significant control and security improvements and better interoperability with both leading proprietary and open-source platforms.

Community radio stations in Sierra Leone and in other emerging democracies may well soon be powered by Campcaster 1.1, free and open source software that turns a PC running the free Linux operating system into an essential tool for radio broadcasting. Campcaster 1.1, code-named "Freetown", was released last week by developers Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF). This week members of MDLF are in Sierra Leone providing training to community users.

Unisys Corporation recently architected and managed a migration to an open source solution that has delivered dramatic benefits for UK stock brokerage firm Redmayne-Bentley. By moving its hardware platform, operating system and applications to a Linux environment on Unisys ES7000/one Enterprise Servers, Redmayne-Bentley has achieved a tenfold increase in processing power, an 88 percent reduction in overnight processing times and significantly enhanced security.

Asterisk, the open source IP PBX software, has scored a resounding endorsement from one of its resellers, Aspect Software - which claims to be the world's largest company solely focused on the contact centre - is being used for Aspect's new corporate headquarters, with 500 users.

A few weeks ago, I decided to start looking for a new system. After a fair amount of searching, I settled on a Shuttle XPC SN27P2 barebones system that includes the case, motherboard, and power supply. Since it's hard to find information about supported hardware under Linux, I thought I'd share my experience with the XPC. It's a tiny system that can pack a hefty punch, and it's a good system for users who want to run Linux.

ECMA has approved Microsofts Office OpenXML and is about to submit it to the ISO/IEC for consideration as an open standard. However, as it currently stands, this format cannot be considered a proper Open Standard.

kdump and SystemTap Enhancements to Increase Serviceability in Production Systems

Communities in countries such as Sierra Leone will soon be using Linux and the recently released Campcaster 1.1 software to build community broadcasting efforts. Campcaster is free software built on Linux for independent radio stations.

DesktopLinux.com's executive editor recently decided to retire Red Hat 7 after seven years of loyal service as his home LAN's firewall/router OS. This article chronicles his trials and tribulations as he presses "pure Debian" into service, first as a server and then as a Linux desktop.

By focusing on the analysis of data captured using signal handlers, you can speed up the most time-consuming part of debugging: finding the bug. This article gives a background on Linux signals with examples specifically tested on PPC Linux, then goes on to show how to design your handlers to output information that lets you quickly home in on failed portions of code.

Last week we flew over the virtualization landscape and got a peek at the lay of the land. Today we'll look at some of the Linux applications for implementing virtualization: Xen, User-Mode Linux, VMWare, chroot jails, and OpenVZ.

Intalio plans to release its business process management tools under an open source license. The Redwood City, Calif., company said Tuesday it plans to offer the BPMS Community Edition under the Mozilla Public License starting in the first quarter of 2007. The suite includes an Eclipse-based business process design tool that supports the business process modeling notation (BPMN) standard.

Belkin is shipping a WiFi phone based on Linux and Skype's proprietary VoIP (voice-over-IP) client. The Belkin WiFi Phone for Skype can use open or encrypted WiFi networks, and connects seamlessly at commercial hotspots and hot zones operated by Boingo, Belkin says.

Back at 3GSM in February, PalmSource (now officially ACCESS Systems) introduced the ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP), a new Linux-based mobile operating system (OS) for smartphones that's intended to be the follow up to the Palm OS. The company said at the time it would get full version of the platform to licensees by the close of 2006.

The 2.6.20 Linux kernel will include a driver aimed at allowing user-space processes to exploit virtualization capabilities in modern 64-bit x86 Intel and AMD processors. The KVM (kernel-based virtual machine) patch was submitted in late October by Avi Kivity, and committed by Linus Torvalds to the 2.6 tree this week.

Want to build a new generation of free software users? Support projects such as Edubuntu. My sister-in-law works at an afterschool program for elementary school students. It’s flexible and inexpensive, which is very nice: these kids wouldn’t have many options for safe adult supervision without it. Of course, that means the program has very little money, especially for luxuries such as a computer. My brother scrounged up an aging eMachine and installed Edubuntu. All of a sudden, a 400 MHz machine without an Internet connection and with no hope of installing legitimately-purchased educational software had plenty of colorful free software and an interface clear enough for my three year old nephew to find his favorite games. (He likes the colors and shapes game with the train.)

Excerpt from the bookConfiguring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source by Barrie Dempster and James Eaton-Lee. Published by Packt Publishing and reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. IPCop is a firewall for the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) network, which is extremely easy to use and is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This excerpt outlines a few common methods of deploying IPCop and the motivation behind these topologies along with descriptions of some of the featrues you can deploy.

The month of October has been, at least to this writer, one of discovery. The technical one was by far the easier of the two: changing Linux distributions. While I've done my best to keep tabs on the literally hundreds of different versions of Linux available, at the end of the day one needs to settle down and pick one for everyday use. Operating systems are (and rightfully should be) the boring means-to-an-end part of one's IT needs. But that doesn't mean that the OS should be taken for granted - some are more useful than others.

It has 10 main predictions for 2007, but numbers nine and 10 affect Microsoft. It reckons Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts on client operating systems will backfire, and that will drive customers towards Linux.

The two companies announced a partnership and support agreement last week to optimize the interaction between MySQL databases and Open-Xchange groupware functions. Open-Xchange customers won't have to pay extra for product support for MySQL, they said.