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Deputies elected to the French National Assembly in the next legislative session will find open-source software on their desktop PCs. The use of free software will result in substantial cost savings, despite the cost of migration and training, the Assembly said.

X-Evian, a Linux distribution in English and Spanish that draws from Ubuntu and Knoppix code, last month released a live CD -- version 0.7 -- that features a 2.6.17 kernel and the XFce desktop environment. X-Evian is a compilation which has been carefully chosen and configured for activist users, for liberated cultural, technological and social production, the Spain-based project team said. It is the team's first new release since 2003 -- it was originally built upon Debian GNU/Linux and Knoppix, the team said.

LXer Feature: 24-Nov-2006 No one knows better than this community what Linux Distro is best. The problem is, there may be as many different answers as there are different distros. As a means to assemble a database, we've come to the Linux Community to pose this simple question.

We at nUbuntu are proud to announce the release of our x86 version nUbuntu built on Ubuntu 'Edgy Eft' 6.10. The main goal of nUbuntu is to create a distribution which is derived from the Ubuntu distribution, and add packages related to security testing... to create a new distribution for the learning experience.

Release managers are not mentioned in the Debian Constitution, yet few positions in Debian are more influential, especially in the final stages of preparation for a release. Recently, Andreas Barth, who shares the release manager position with Steve Langasek, took time from his efforts coordinating the Etch release -- tentatively scheduled for early December -- to talk about the stages in the release process, the goals for the upcoming release, and the short- and long-range problems that he faces in his role.

Japan's Vine Linux project team, whose distribution features an integrated Japanese or English environment for desktop PCs and notebooks, today released its version 4.0 for i386 and PowerPC processors. The distro features a 2.6.16 kernel and the GNOME 2.14.2 desktop environment.

This is Steve Shreeve, Medsphere's founding CEO and a current member of its Board of Directors. In my capacity as a Director of the company, and as the largest individual shareholder in the company, I am compelled to respond to a recent article that was published by Medsphere's current CEO, Kenneth W. Kizer, regarding Medsphere's open source stance, which is available at the following link:http://www.medsphere.com/press/20061121

[ - Note: Indeed, this doesn't have anything to do with Linux or Free Software, except for the fuzz about Intellectual Property. Therefore, this story is just added for your reading pleasure - hkwint ]

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Mapuche Indians in Chile are trying to take global software giant Microsoft to court in a legal battle which raises the question of whether anyone can ever "own" the language they speak.

The DSL Mall is a free market place for merchants. Basically, we are giving away store fronts to merchants who we feel may be a good match with the DSL community. Who should consider joining? Anybody that has nice merchandise to sell and is interested in having his/her items viewed by the DSL community. There is absolutely no cost to you for this store front, and you are likely to get over 2k impressions a day if the products are a good match for our community.

This is one post in a series, describing challenges we need to overcome to make free software ubiquitous on the desktop. I have this weird relationship with the words “it’s not supported”.

Work had some old desktop PCs going spare and I set one up for my father. Mostly because I didn't want to have to remote admin a Windows machine I decided to install Debian on it. While Debian is viewed as a mostly server-specific distro, I believe that that it can be configured into a perfectly usable desktop system.

Virtualization is a trendy topic in the server room now, especially as commodity computers begin to support features that mainframes have had for decades. Mainframes aren't standing still, however; IBM's POWER5 architecture supports powerful virtualization features on AIX... and Linux. Ken Milberg describes some of the benefits of the recent work on this platform.

Tis the season to be deluged with ads for all manner of crap for kids, including “educational” computer games. Yeah, right. Wouldn’t you rather give your kids something of value, and that will help them develop real skills? Instead of turning into nearsighted wheezing lardbutted obsessive-compulsive button-pushers?

From robots to ice cream machines...

Discover some useful tips for designing a database schema that's fast, efficient, and responsive to change.

Without a strong enough reason to change to Linux people aren't. If only there were applications that people really wanted that were exclusive to Linux. Enter Mythtv, the most mature open source media application available. Boasting features that put Windows Media Centre to shame and a zero price tag, Mythtv is just the sort of application that could change peoples perceptions on what Linux is and what it is capable of.

On the day after Thanksgiving, Xandros Inc. will be giving business Linux users an early holiday present: Xandros Desktop Professional version 4.0. This new version of this well-regarded Debian-based desktop is designed to work in both Linux- and Windows-based office networks. It comes ready for use on NT domain, AD (Active Directory), and Linux/Unix NIS (Network Information Service)-based LANs.

Forget about Tivoization. How about adding a clause to the next version of the GPL that counters Novellization? The clause would say (in proper legalese), that if any code infringes on intellectual property or patents held by third parties, and the third parties take legal action, the contributors of the offending code assume 100% liability. In short, if Novell injects Microsoft IP into open source and Microsoft wants to sue, it must sue Novell and nobody else, because Novell assumes liability under this new license. This would render any"promise not to sue the end customer" agreement with Novell meaningless.

Just about everyone has expressed an opinion on the Novell/Microsoft patent agreement -- except, that is, for the 800-pound gorilla of Linux: IBM. Today, Scott Handy, IBM's VP of Worldwide Linux and Open Source, decided that enough was enough and it was time to state IBM's position.

Most people think that OpenOffice.org is a strong office-suite in its own right. But, when it came to a back-office document collaboration and management engine, like Microsoft SharePoint to enable OpenOffice users to work together, it was a different story.