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Open source software is a software license that allows the user to take a look under the hood, make any tweaks and adjustments that they might like to see, and then freely redistribute that same software to anyone they wish.

Now we’re thinking of having a “user and business” conference, aimed at bringing together the people who deploy and manage Ubuntu in the real world (well, in the USA in particular, but let’s think globally) with those who help to produce it. The big question is - who would want to come? In order to run such an event we would need about 500 people to attend. It would be a 2-day conference (with additional days of workshops and tutorials separately, probably) and would likely be run in close proximity to another big event.

Messing up your hard disk's partition table doesn't take much effort, especially when you're preparing a dual-boot machine. Even a mistimed fdisk /mbr can spell disaster, erasing the master boot record (MBR) and making the disk unusable. But victims of damaged MBRs rejoice -- gpart can save your day. This utility scans a hard disk and prepares a partition table of areas that resemble a partition, which you can use to make the disk bootable again.

Welcome to this year's 43rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! On the eve of several major new releases, such as Firefox 2.0, Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu 6.10, this week's DistroWatch Weekly takes a brief look at some of the new products, comments on the new Fedora 6 release, and asks whether Firefox has lost some of its former glory. In the meantime, Xandros Corporation is rumoured to be under a "reorganisation", while Munich continues its march towards a successful switch of thousands of its desktop and server computers to LiMux, a Debian-based distribution that recently reached version 1.0. Also in this issue: a reader recommends BeaFanatIX, a light-weight and user-friendly distribution that attempts to revive the concepts of the BeatrIX project, while the "First Looks" section introduces the new Xen Demo CD 3.0.3. Happy reading!

Much less Linux viruses exist when one compares the numbers to ones on the ubiquitous Windows, but with compatibility libraries like WINE to run windows software on Linux, and and "windows-on-Linux" virtualisation products like Win4Lin an antivirus on Linux is essential.

The latest LinuxQuestions.org Podcast. Topics include the LQ Job Marketplace, LinuxWorld UK, the Microsoft exec exodus continues, McAfee and Symantec think Vista unfair update, Flash 9 Linux beta is live, IE7 final released, The truth about the SCOX/EV1 SCOsource deal and why has Microsoft abandoned the power user.

The talk lately has centred about Vista's security APIs, but Linux certainly needs improvements in this area, because AV vendors still rely on an external kernel module to implement "real time" file scanning.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: the location for aKademy 2007 is Glasgow, Scotland. The KDE backbone of the NEPOMUK research project has been imported into KDE SVN. A GUI editor for database lookup columns has been added in Kexi. More SVG card sets are added to the resurgent KDE games for KDE 4. User interface enhancements in Kst and Kalzium. Multimedia file tag handling improvements in Amarok (.wav) and Strigi (.mp3).

It is, ironically, as if one of the most significant effects of "Vista" (meaning sight) may end up being the "awakening" of the masses rather than whatever the MS marketing team wanted the name to represent. In effect, people are being literally chased away from Microsoft to alternative Free Software options such as GNU/Linux.

Red Hat Inc has joined a European Commission project to create telecommunication service delivery platform standards, as it looks to further its position in the telecoms market.

This article shows how you can convert .rpm packages to .deb packages with a tool called alien so that you can easily install them on Debian and Ubuntu systems.

This article offers a variety of resources that address some of the main issues that are part of SOA development. It outlines specific resources to help you understand SOA and deliver your own solutions. It also highlighted products that are specifically related to creating SOA solutions.

In this episode: a brief look at other window managers, including Openbox (more info here and here), Enlightenment (more info here and here), Ratpoison (more info here and here), Windowmaker, FVWM (more info here), Ion (more info here and here), and PekWM; a Listener Tip; listener feedback.

So you want to learn Linux? The best way, the only really good way, is to get a distribution, load it on a computer and give it a try. Any of the ones I mentioned recently at DesktopLinux.com in "What's the best Linux for beginners?" will do fine. However, you may need or want to read some materials about Linux to get up to speed. My favorite book is one I've mentioned often: Robin "Roblimo" Miller's book: Point and Click Linux.

You could hear Rob Levy’s teeth chattering all the way from Bangalore. The CTO of BEA Systems must be scared out of his wits. How else to explain the mishmash of half-truths and misleading facts he told the IDG News Service during a tour of BEA’s India-based R&D facility recently?

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions about how to install Xen (version 3.0.3) on a Debian Sarge (3.1) system. It shows how to compile Xen, dom0 and domU kernels from the sources as well as how to install Xen from precompiled binaries. Creating guest domains from images is also covered by this article.

On thing that the recent KDE-Gnome war has learned me is that the smartest people of all are the "civilians", our users. They just use a mixture of what is there and don't understand what the fuss is all about. They happily shop in the giant bazaar for whatever they need.

On the eve of the OracleWorld user conference, market watchers are divided on whether Oracle intends to make an announcement concerning its Linux plans. However, I believe it's a fair bet that Oracle is working on incorporating Ubuntu Linux into its own product.

Disk Doctors Launches! Linux Data Recovery Software Disk Doctors Linux Data Recovery software is a tool that helps you to recover data from Ext2 & Ext3 File System which may be on any Linux distribution, to name a few Redhat, Suse, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Caldera, Slackware, Gentoo, Kubuntu etc.

LaCie announced it is the first to offer a complete burning and LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling solution for all operating systems. This includes the first-ever LightScribe Labeler software for Linux, a new version of LightScribe Labeler software for Mac, and SureThing LightScribe Labeler for Windows.