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There are a lot of great new programs and innovations expected in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The Novell-led Mono project isn't one of them.

As if MP3, OGG, WMA, AAC, DivX, and FM radio support wasn't enough, this Turbolinux Wizpy player comes pre-installed with Linux. The OS, Turbolinux FUJI, has Firefox, Thunderbird, and Skype, which makes it easy to just plug the player into any machine and boot directly to Linux.

After the usual new-release downloading frenzy died down a bit, I downloaded the 3.3 gigabyte DVD .iso image, stoked the boiler of my test PC, and put Fedora Core 6 through its paces. My mission: to determine if FC6 is suitable for production systems, or if it's better suited as a bleeding-edge testbed.

SSV Embedded Systems is shipping a tiny, chip-like, Linux-based SBC (single-board computer) that targets "wireless sensor networks" (WSNs). The DIL/NetPC ADNP/9200 is based on an Atmel ARM9 microcontroller, and integrates Ethernet, UART, SPI, SSI/I2C, and USB controllers, among other functions, according to the company.

After a week of saber rattling to seed the marketplace with FUD about the dangers of moving away from Microsoft to Linux, look for Microsoft to lodge a lawsuit against a medium sized user that's large enough to be noticed but too small to sustain a defence in court. That's the prediction of a Linux specialist who has been watching Microsoft's actions of the past week.

Explore the register-level details of tuning the CPC945's double data rate 2 (DDR2) memory controller for specific hardware implementations. Author Neil Leeder introduces nifty self-calibrating hardware features of the CPC945 to help you learn how to operate reliably with different memory configurations.

MySQL AB, today announced that Toto-Lotto Niedersachsen GmbH has standardized on MySQL for all its appropriate future IT needs. The German lottery company based its selection on the success it has had using MySQL Cluster to run its online business applications.

Developed with security and speed in mind, Postfix has become a popular alternative to Sendmail. The Book of Postfix published by No Starch Press is a complete guide to Postfix whether used by the home user, as a mailrelay or virus scanning gateway, or as a company mailserver. Practical examples show how to deal with daily challenges like protecting mail users from SPAM and viruses, managing multiple domains, and offering roaming access. The following is chapter 5 from "The Book of Postfix". Reprinted with permission from No Starch Press, all rights reserved.

A recent comment from a reader at the blog of helios gave some advice when it came to DRM and the Linux Community. Chill out. Well, for everyone that is dispensing Chill Pills on this issue, allow me to offer something to wash it down with. A bit bitter is it?

LinuxBasic.org, an online community devoted to helping people learn to install and run Linux, has announced its second free Linux class. "An Introduction to Linux Basics" aims to instill a basic understanding about Linux for beginners who want to know more about how the system works, according to the site.

Ever want to set up your own wireless hot spot? Eric Geier's new book professes to teach you how...the Cisco way. According to the introduction, this book is equally useful to the IT Professional or the average computer user who wants to construct a wi-fi accessable environment. This was the first Cisco Press book I'd seen that wasn't heavily laden with a large number of arcane acronyms such as OSPF, IGRP and BGP. I wanted to see if it met the standards for clear writing and accuracy I'd come to expect from this publisher.

Advocates of free and open source software, myself included, like to talk about the "democratizing" effect of free software. Others, especially non-programmers, are quick to point out that the only technical people can take advantage of half of the enumerated freedoms in FOSS. The freedoms to modify and collaborate mean little if you don't know to program. Over time, I have come to the conclusion that the only good solution to this problem -- and one that I was initially quite opposed to -- is to teach everyone to program.

IBM says that its open source WebSphere Java application server is grabbing support from developers faster than any of its rivals. In a survey of Eclipse developers by US research firm Evans Data, 16 per cent said they used IBM's WebSphere Application Server Community Edition to deploy their apps, up from almost nothing a year ago.

OpenVPN is an easy-to-use open source VPN software based on SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) that offers cross-platform interoperability. The majority of OpenVPN tutorials I've found describe how users can connect to a corporate network from their laptops over insecure networks, such as the wireless network in a hotel. By contrast, the setup I'm about to describe is better suited for permanently connecting entire networks -- for example, branch offices to the headquarters of a company.

If you read almost any publication that talks about Apple from an IT point of view, you'll read a lot about Parallels Desktop for Mac, from Parallels. People talk about the kind of load Parallels puts on a system, or installing it, or whether it makes it easy to set up virtual machines, etc. But what you don't see a lot of (or enough of) is what it's like to work with Parallels, and that's what I'm going to talk about here today.

This morning, I accidentally put my contact lenses in wrong (left in right eye, right in left eye) and when I got in my car to drive to work, I thought I was going blind. I quickly realized my mistake and fixed it when I got to my destination. My little misadventure is relevant because I got a similar feeling when I tried to read "JavaScript and Ajax for the Web". It's probably a consequence of the series format (and so the writers can hardly be faulted...blame the publishers instead) and as a result, I found it pretty hard to read this book let alone learn from it.

Many sophisticated machine learning algorithms cannot process large amounts of data on a single node, but IBM Parallel Machine Learning Toolbox (PML) can do so by distributing the computations. This distribution speeds up computations and expedites training by weeks, days, or even hours in an easy, reliable way. PML can run on a wide array of architectures including single-node, small clusters, grids, and BlueGene.

While there are often negative connotations being associated with a conglomerate, the new one which we are witnessing today is different in so many ways. This is a conglomerate you, your project or your business can be a part of to the full extent. All you have to do is observe and play by the rules. This is a conglomerate that we today call: The Community. That is its name.

Italian POS (point-of-sale systems) specialist DA Sistemi Group, will soon obtain security approval from Visa, MasterCard, and JCB for a Linux-based PIN-entry terminal. The PINPAD DAndY Pad incorporates a security-oriented SoC (system-on-chip) and associated Linux software from Innova-Card, and targets supermarket and store counter payment transactions.

Free Software is big business. This may come as a surprise to those whose understanding of open source software development practice ends at the caffeinated hacker contributing code in the small hours from the comfort of his bedroom. But in between this, and the fact that five of the ten most reliable web hosters run their sites on the open source operating system Linux, is the story of an industry of support and bespoke development that gives the major corporations running this software the products and peace of mind they need to conduct business on a grand scale.