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The RAR and 7-Zip file compression formats originated on Windows, so support for them on Linux is not as automatic as it is for old Unix holdovers like Gzip and TAR. But with the right software, you can handle these compressed files without much trouble.

Fedora 7 Test 1 has been released today. For this particular release, we only did a Desktop spin of the package collection. We are still fine tuning targetted spins of the collection as part of the merger of Core and Extras. We also produced a LiveCD that has the ability to install to your harddrive, should you wish.

One of the advantages of using GPLed software is that anybody who wish to use or modify the code can do so without fear of any repercussions. Ditto for the documentation of the software. This has at times tempted many a book author to release their books under a liberal license and make their efforts available for free in an electronic format. One such venture is the Free Book Linux Kernel in a Nutshell.

The beta version of Bianca was released and is available for download. Bianca comes with two brand new themes: Bianca-Blue and Bianca-Green which give the distribution a whole new 'minty' look. Only one panel at the bottom, a Slab-like menu, new default icons. The following applications were added to Bianca: mintMenu, a replacement for the GNOME menu; mintConfig, a Control Center application; mintDisk, a program which automatically mounts FAT32 and NTFS partitions; mintDesktop, which now comes as a package, has a graphical configuration front-end; mintWifi, which now comes as a package. - DistroWatch. Screenshots of Linux Mint 2.2 Beta are available at LinuxQuestions.org.

Artistic geeks often find creative ways to combine technology and art. A love for good software and beautiful guitars is what inspired Canadian luthier Mark Kett to begin the Linux Guitar Project.

Bash is one of those Unix things that I am fully aware has a lot more potential and power than I know how to use. Every so often I go looking for another handful of useful things to learn about it: this is a selection of recent ones.

One Laptop Per Child project Leader Jim Gettys reveals how having "open" hardware is a huge benefit for the project. He also talks about how the specific audience of the OLPC system calls for a user interface radically different from the regular. This and more in his interview in preparation to FOSDEM 2007.

I spoke with some guys at the AlwaysOn show yesterday who have an interesting business model aimed at tech support professionals. Spiceworks have a radically different take on free software. They allow anybody to download their application which monitors devices on the network. It incorporates a ticketing system and also the ability to share experiences in a forum environment with other Spiceworks users.

TimeSys Corp is sponsoring The Open Source Summit, presented by The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE) Pittsburgh.

When MySQL files for IPO, we'll get to view their financials. We'll get to compare their performance metrics against Red Hat (which, until now, has been the only pure-play OSS player with public financials) and traditional vendors. I'm willing to bet that their metrics will be (surprisingly) close to metrics from traditional software vendors.

PyDEV is a plugin that enables developers to use Eclipse for Python and Jython development, making Eclipse a first-class Python IDE. The software offers features such as code completion, syntax highlighting, syntax analysis, automated refactoring, template system, source code quality checking, and a debugging environment.

Embedded Linux specialist TimeSys is among the sponsors of a Pittsburgh conference exploring the strategies and economics of open source software. The "Open Source Summit" will feature discussions of corporate open source initiatives, adoption, licensing, and business models, and will be held the evening of Thurs., Feb. 15.

It's maddening. For someone who is trying make a daily use of what is to be considered a beginner friendly distribution for the first time, most options leave a lot to be desired for the uninitiated. More often than not, new Linux users find that everything works great at first only to discover that setting up something as common as a dual-head monitor configuration requires editing your xorg.conf file. If you are coming from a non-Linux environment, this can be a fairly frightening proposition.

This tutorial describes how to set up and run an UnrealIRCD server on OpenSuSE 10.2 and Fedora Core 6. It also shows how to install Anope IRC services. Anope is a set of Services for IRC networks that allows users to manage their nicks and channels in a secure and efficient way, and administrators to manage their network with powerful tools.

As those who are following Microsoft's OOXML formats through the standardization process will know, those formats are now in the "contradiction" phase in JTC 1 at ISO/IEC. Or, so it would seem, they are in the "so, what is a contradiction, anyway?" phase in JTC1.

Sometimes when I have a few minutes to spare, I enjoy running stats with Google Trends. During one of my random searches, I came across something that really stood out to me. It was a quote by Larry McVoy of BitMover and an ongoing collaborator with Linus Torvalds, the person behind the Linux operating system.

Frustrating hardware compatibility issues on Linux may become a thing of the past thanks to an offer by the Linux kernel development community to develop drivers for manufacturers free of charge.

Rubén Rodríguez Pérez has announced the release of Trisguel GNU/Linux 1.0, a 100% free, Debian-based distribution sponsored by the regional government of Galicia in Spain and with complete support for the Galician language. The project's first stable release comes with kernel 2.6.18.6 and includes GNOME 2.14, IceWeasel 2.0, OpenOffice.org 2.0.4, 3D desktop with AIGLX and Compiz, pre-configured software repository containing additional Debian 4.0 packages with security updates, new installer with improved hardware detection, support for assistive technologies, new live system which can be installed on USB storage devices, and other new features. - DistroWatch. Screenshots of Trisguel 1.0 are available at LinuxQuestions.org.

A short snippet from DTV's blog mentions they're looking for testers for Release Candidate Zero (RC0). In case you wonder what DTV is [from GetDemocracy.com]:

Play virtually any video-- Quicktime, WMV, MPEG, AVI, XVID, and more. Subscribe to any video RSS feed, podcast, or video blog. Download and save videos from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and other sites. Watch free HD videos in gorgeous fullscreen. Easily download any BitTorrent file. Fast. Then watch it in the same app.

It's 100% Free Software (GPL'd, "open source") and available for multiple OS platforms, including Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.

How big a role can Open Source play in helping developers build security and identity management solutions? Well, Liberty Alliance, a group of G1000 end users and vendors working on federated identity management and web services, wants to find out. The group has launched openLiberty.org, an online portal to offer tools and community support to devs using Open Source to build identity-based applications.