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So what’s good about a monoculture, and why does Microsoft win so often when people make a decision about platforms? Largely because what the open source community sees as a strength, people trying to get a job done in the real world see as a weakness. We celebrate the diversity of choices available to solve a problem and call it freedom. IT managers and CIOs look at it and call it chaos, confusion and uncertainty.

The agreement calls to develop software that will make MySQL compatible with programs that run IBM's System i line of business computers, including IBM's i5 operating system DB2 database

[Not really about Linux, but still interesting. — Sander]

This guide shows you how to configure samba for Feisty Fawn enabling it to share files with windows machines, also includes a How To install swat, for GUI configuration of samba.

Here's the reviews and impressions of Ubuntu 7.04 so far.

This week on Open News the Open Solutions Alliance encourages interoperability, Micheal Dell uses Ubuntu at home, and Microsoft software for $3. All that plus your email right now on Open News.

On the day that support for Mozilla Firefox 1.5 was scheduled to end, an announcement has been posted on the Mozilla Developer News weblog stating that support for Firefox 1.5 has been extended until mid-May. Once support for Firefox 1.5 ends, no more 1.5.0.x security and stability updates will be released. The last such update was Firefox 1.5.0.11, which was made available on Tuesday 20th March this year. Users are strongly advised to upgrade to the latest Firefox 2 release, currently 2.0.0.3, as soon as possible.

Gelato 2.1 (NVIDIA’s final-frame rendering software) is out. Bryan Hoff tests the new features and goes under the hood to see what improvements have been made.

[100% closed source and not very exciting, but it's interesting to see that the Linux version of a major vendor's product is released well ahead of the Windows version. — Sander]

The Linux key retention service introduced with Linux 2.6 is a great new way to handle authentication, cryptography, cross-domain user mappings, and other security concerns for the Linux platform. Learn the components of the Linux key retention service and get an understanding of its usage with a working sample application.

LXer Feature: 25-Apr-2007

Chaucer fans will immediately understand when I say that Vector Linux is a modern retelling of the Wife of Bath's Tale - with a few twists.

You are invited to Akademy Edu & School Day on Tuesday 3rd July. This day will focus on installing and running free educational software in schools, presenting software as well as getting feedback from teachers and community people.

IBM has released beta software to let applications written for Linux on servers with x86 processors run in Big Blue's System p machines built with its own Power processors.

A review of Geany - a relatively new editor which is lightweight, simple and has nice features at the same time. It's open source (GPL) and has binaries available for Linux and Windows. A great choice for casual programmers.

Berry Linux 0.80, a Fedora-based live CD for the desktop with support for the Japanese and English languages, was released this week by its Japan-based project team. The distribution incorporates a 2.6.20.7 kernel and includes a default KDE desktop and support for 3D desktop effects with AIGLX and Beryl 0.2.0, the team said.

Novell is once again trying to finish off The SCO Group's court cases by proving that Novell is the company that actually owns Unix's intellectual property rights. What makes this latest attempt different, is we finally see an explanation of how SCO ended up owning Unix without owning its copyrights.

Leave it to Bill Gates. There’s a reason he’s the richest man in the world. The software isn’t great, but it’s good enough to do the job. Unfortunately, the “job” isn’t just personal productivity, it’s technology lock-in. It’s all about creating a new generation of computer users who are hooked on Windows and programs that run under the proprietary operating system.

Hugh MacLeod is at it again. He asks the question, if open source is so great, where are all the open source billionaires (as if that is the right way to gauge the success of the software)? Never mind that we could ask the same question of proprietary software: "Where are all the proprietary billionaires?" There just aren't that many.

California remains the fertile crescent of the US technology industry, employing more tech workers and paying higher wages than any other state.

Red Hat has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the business of MetaMatrix, a provider of data management and integration software. Once the transaction is completed, in approximately 60 days, MetaMatrix will be integrated into Red Hat's JBoss division

Oracle's venture into the Linux market was called "a bit disingenuous" by a Red Hat executive speaking at the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif. on Tuesday. The executive, Michael Evans, Red Hat vice president of corporate development, speculated that Oracle wants to contain open source.

As Red Hat's modifications to the Linux kernel to improve real-time scheduling near completion, their director of emerging technologies, Tim Burke, has been pushing for its use in the business world. This is a prime example of the beauty of open source and the GPL, and the growing fallacy of closed-source.