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This week we are giving away a copy of The Linux® Kernel Primer: A Top-Down Approach for x86 and PowerPC Architectures AND a copy of Linux® Debugging and Performance Tuning: Tips and Techniques.

Today is Labor Day in the USA, a holiday on which we honor workers by taking a day off. That makes about as much sense as ... well, you fill in the blank. We'll be back with new features tomorrow.

From the days when installing a Linux distribution required a 300-page bible, to the days of Live CDs, the question "How do I learn Linux?" doesn't seem to have a ready answer. That's probably because the question itself is a little vague. If you want to learn how to use a Linux distribution, trying out one should help you. If as a network or system administrator you want to learn how to manage one, the SAG and NAG guides should get you started. But if you want to learn how a Linux distribution works, how it interacts with all the pieces of free software internally, then you need to lock yourself in a room for a weekend with a copy of Linux From Scratch.

The recent launch of Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 put Xen into the commercial mainstream. If you haven’t come across it, Xen is a fledgling open-source server virtualisation technology. SLES 10 is the first commercially supported operating system to include Xen, but it won’t be the last.

The government inks a deal with Intel to power some 27,000 computers with open source software.

Welcome to this year's 35th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Following a new release of Gentoo Linux last week, another popular "geek" project is likely to announce a major new version this week. Slackware Linux, the world's oldest surviving Linux distribution, has been through no fewer than four release candidates, so the final version can't be far away. Also expected later this week - GNOME 2.16. In other news, Linspire scraps the annual fee for its software repository, Ubuntu contributors keep enhancing their favourite distribution with extra software, services and even a new start-up script, and the NetBSD world is rocked by accusations of mismanagement by one of the project's founders. We also have the pleasure to announce that DistroWatch has once again been voted one of the "Top 101" web sites by PC Magazine and that the August 2006 donation of US$350 goes to the Puppy Linux project. Happy reading!

Unlike some people, I'm not a Mac or a PC guy - I'm a Mac and a PC guy. There's room for both options in this world, and there doesn't have to be a bitter rivalry between both sets of users. In fact, I think you're only firing on all creative and productive cylinders if you use both (or all three, if you include Linux).

Zimbra is lobbying for an Ajax standard that lets several users simultaneously alter dynamic content--spreadsheets, charts, texts, or Web site information--through an online interface.

Google last week released in beta a bundle of online communications tools that corporate users can customize for their domains. They include e-mail, instant messaging and calendars.

[Might be of peripheral interest to our readers - dcparris]

What does Red Hat really think about virtualisation? The good news is that Novell is now competing with a company whose marketing savvy is even worse than its own.

What do you give the GI Joe that has everything? The Recon-X military grade Pocket PC. Apparently intended for those who work in industries like construction, the new series will withstand drops, heavy vibrations, extreme temperatures, dust and water - conditions that would turn your average PDA into an expensive paperweight.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Kickoff, the experimental application menu alternative developed by SuSE, is imported into KDE SVN. Import of the work to support SVG scalable tilesets in KMahjongg. KViewShell gets support for LZW compressed fax files. Strigi gets support for the D-Bus Inter-Process Communication service, KBFX, a prospective element of Plasma, gets full support for Strigi. Kaffeine gets DVB plugin support. Amarok sees fundamental changes in a key statistics technology, along with a name change of the technology to "Amarok File Tracking (AFT)". Development of SafeSite, a network-aware phishing protection service proceeds. Interface changes in KTorrent.

We, the Debian maintainers of cdrtools, the cdrecord/mkisofs/cdda2wav program suite, just uploaded cdrkit into the Debian archive. It will hit your unstable box with the next run of dinstall, please help us and test it.

This I feel is the greatest problem for people, especially academics when wanting to switch to GNU/Linux. Many people in my family work at universities in the UK. These people would happily switch to GNU/Linux tomorrow if it could run their .doc and other proprietary file formats properly.

To be frank you do not need a new full source tree in order to just compile or build module against the running kernel i.e an exploded source tree is not required to build kernel driver or module. This is essential because if you just want to compile and install driver for new hardware such as Wireless card or SCSI device etc. With following method, you will save the time, as you are not going to compile entire Linux kernel.

Undo Software unveiled UndoDB, a bidirectional debugger for compiled programs, which allows a program to be run backwards in time as well as forwards. The program can be stepped back line-by-line, or rewound to any point in its history. Programmers can also play the program forwards and backwards in a totally repeatable fashion, "homing in" on the cause of a bug.

The requirements for new packet-based triple play and other enhanced services are driving the need for improved infrastructure throughout the world. In order to satisfy that need, telecom and networking equipment suppliers are also looking to utilise flexible platforms that enable them to reduce cost while speeding time to market. For many equipment providers, this means a move away from in-house proprietary systems toward open platforms.

Except for David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, every member of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education found enough to endorse in the draft the panel produced last month to support it over all. All of them, certainly, also found some aspects of the report objectionable, yet swallowed those objections and agreed, at a public meeting August 10, to sign the report.

[How is it that Microsoft gets a seat on an education commision? - Scott]

Linux has a cult-like following among enthusiasts and believers in the open source movement, who brush off the underlying philosophy of locked source code and consider it a hindrance to the progress of software development.

[This is one of the better articles I have seen on the subject. - dcparris]

The storage market has become the latest to face the open-source revolution, with a new product from Cleversafe claiming to offer secure, economical and private storage using a dispersed storage grid technology.