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"Linux rocks!" "No, it's lame--stick with Windows!" Visit any Web site or online forum where impassioned computer users debate the relative merits of operating systems, and you'll find endless disagreement. The only way to determine which operating system fits your needs is to run both on the same PC, configured for dual-booting. You also need to be able to access your data files from either OS, which is the trickiest part of the process.

Ubuntu Christian Edition is a variant of Ubuntu that is marketed specifically towards Christians. The primary differences are marketing, Christianity-related package selection, and theme. While this may seem like a waste of time since all of these can be done with Ubuntu itself, it does make sense from a sales-pitch perspective.

[This review was erroneously rejected. We post it now with apologies to the author. - dcparris]

With less than a month before its kick-off, organisers of the world-renowned linux.conf.au will this week announce the final keynote speaker, who is also set to represent a shift in the traditional technical focus of the event.

For the uninformed, Freespire is a new product released to the community by the Linux distributor Linspire. What makes Freespire so unique is their very blatant decision to include open source and proprietary software under one hat.

As a language educator and IT aficionado, I am constantly searching for tools that I can use in conjunction with language education. Lately I've been using the audio manipulation and conversion tool Audacity to record and edit audio inputs and convert them into a variety of formats, including the ever popular MP3, for a number of uses in courses and course materials preparation.

Version 3.2 of Sabayon Linux hit the web released last week. The Gentoo-based distro features a 2.6.18 kernel and a choice of KDE, GNOME, or XFce desktop environments, and now also includes out-of-the-box support for Intel Pro wireless 3945.

Lazy programming is a general concept of delaying the processing of a function or request until the results are needed. This concept has numerous applications, from the obvious to the obscure. Thinking in terms of lazy programming can help you rid your code of unneeded computation and restructure programs to be more problem-oriented.

Asian Linux distributor TurboLinux is readying an iPod-like like device that doubles as a Linux boot drive. The "Wizpy" media player, set to ship in Japan in February, enables users to take their Linux with them, for added convenience, security, and privacy, the company says.

Linux was shot into space Dec. 16, as part of a second-phase Air Force Research Laboratory program aimed at making space more "operationally responsive." The TacSat-2 (tactical satellite) program aims to create "micro satellites" that can be launched quickly and cheaply, to support tactical military operations.

At the cost of great exertion and mental prowess, I have collected just for you an astounding assortment of useful commands and tools for performing amazing feats like network host discovery and mapping your network, mapping IP addresses to their physical locations, spying on everyone who is logged into a computer and even better, faster, securer remote file access.

A t'ai-chi instructor once told me that he considered ten years practice in the art a"good beginning". By year's end I'll have maintained the pages at http://linux-sound.org for more than ten years, so I feel justified claiming that the site is off to a decent start. However, I have a somewhat suprising 10-year celebration announcement: The next edition of the Linux Sound& Music Applications pages (a.k.a. the Linux soundapps site) will be the last under my control. I'll leave it online in a final condition with all addresses checked and repaired, but my tenure as the site's sole maintainer is over.

MontaVista and WLAN (wireless LAN) chipset maker Atheros have founded an open source project aimed at enabling Linux to more easily support a wide variety of SDIO peripherals, including WLAN cards, bluetooth radios, hard drives, modems, GPS recievers, DTV tuners, cameras, voice recorders, biometric fingerprint readers, and business card scanners.

I received word from my contact at Xandros that they are looking for Red Hat Server Sysadmins for beta testing of Xandros Cross-Platform Management Tools. Xandros recently released version 4.1 of their desktop OS and Xandros Desktop Management Server. OSNews readers make great candidates for this type of beta testing. If you're interested, read on for the details of the call for beta testers.

SUSE co-founder Hubert Mantel is back in the saddle at Novell. Back in November of 2005 when the well-respected chief maintainer of the SUSE Linux kernel left Novell, he said in an email announcing his resignation that "This is no longer the company I founded 13 years ago."

I couldn't have an easier time playing fortune-teller this year. While some segments of the IT market might see the future as a wide-open plain, for the open-source community, 2007 is shaping up to be a year for settling unfinished business.

The company has released an assortment of additions for HP-UX 11i V2 - including server-side encryption, a security chip and fortified data containers - that give customers some nice, high-end options. HP officials bragged that a number of the new tools arrive at no additional cost to customers. In addition, HP insisted that we remind you of its "commitment to the long-term success of the HP-UX roadmap."

Shifting from 19.4% for the week of the 8th to the 14th of April 2006, Firefox user share rose to 23.2% in the week from November 20th to November 26th 2006. Oceania [inc. Australia - hkwint ], experiencing the highest increase (+ 2 points), is now the first continent ahead of Europe in terms of user rate. Firefox is also gaining ground in North America, Africa and Asia (between 1 and 1.9 points), but much more slowly in South America (+0.2 points).

[Even in my conservative country 14%. I wouldn't believe this about three years ago, when Phoeninx, as Firefox was called about version 0.9 if I remember correctly, was far worse than Opera - hkwint ]

Oregon's Portland Community College is one of the largest community colleges in the country, with 90,000 students, five campuses, and a huge network to manage. PCC's policy is to use open source software whenever possible because of its enhanced value. When Technology Solutions Services Customer Support Manager Michael Heuer wanted to find a way to streamline network management, he turned to KBOX, an appliance built on an open source foundation.

Coach Wei will also demo how visual tooling can be layered on top of that reference stack

The Neuros OSD promises a lot - it claims to be the first open source Linux-based embedded media center and it "records video and links your PC, portables and entertainment center". Bold claims, but can it live up to them? Linuxlookup.com has a two page review of the Neuros OSD from both a developer and user perspective.