Showing all newswire headlines

Are we choosing GNU/Linux distributions based on their quality, or is it the media hype?

Even if you have no intention of getting up close and personal with Linux, it may pay to download and burn a version called Knoppix (go to http://www.knoppix.org and click on the US/UK flag logo for an English version of the page or order it on DVD or CD from http://www.linuxcdmall.com/knoppix.html).

The government-run Central Trust of China has mandated for the first time that all desktop computers purchased from now on must be Linux-compatible, demonstrating the government's desire to widen the nation's usage of open source software.

Mozilla's Firefox browser has been updated to fix 13 security vulnerabilities -- five of them rated critical, according to a report June 2 by eWEEK's Ryan Naraine.

Some of the flaws affecting Firefox also exist in Thunderbird, Naraine writes

[Includes links to eWeek's report and DesktopLinux's report on Thunderbird. -- grouch]

Ubuntu makes printing reasonably easy and straightforward. This brief article is for those who need a specific and encouraging step-by-step guide. I hope that this article will not only ensure that you print with ease, but that you have every reason to enjoy a productive GNU/Linux desktop.

“Historically with all of our clients we find that when we’re working with them if we recommend a Debian based solution, their total support costs are lower than they are with some of the other distributions,” said Peddemors, referring to Red Hat and Novell’s Suse.

[I admit to yielding to my prejudice and posting this story solely because of the above quote. -- grouch]

It's all over the press, and a battle will soon be joined: Desktops need 3D.

But what kind of 3D? The term is vague, would it be isometric 3D, Z-buffered vector 3D used to display 2D elements - as we can see in games -, or something hopefully more profound?

Creator Michael "STIBS" Stibane calls STX Linux "a desktop Linux distribution especially targeted to older hardware." I tested version 1.0 of the Slackware 10.2-based distro on an old laptop with a 300MHz Celeron processor, 80MB of RAM, and a 4GB hard disk. I found this young distro for old hardware has promise.

The head of the One Laptop per Child project, Nicholas Negroponte, says he must be doing something right if he is upsetting Microsoft and Intel

Kaspersky Lab, a manufacturer of anti-virus software, claims to have discovered a macro virus for StarOffice and OpenOffice.org. The claim has received widespread media attention on the Internet as the first of its kind. However, according to experts, the alleged virus is nothing more than the use of a long-existing capability in the StarBasic macro language (also known as OOo Basic). Although the potential for malicious macros exists, they can be easily guarded against.

ESR Technology's computer network was based on a combination of Novell NetWare and Microsoft Windows when the company was still a subsidiary of AEA Technology, an environmental and technology consultancy based in the UK. After Coller Capital purchased the risk management company last October, ESR had six months to select, design, and implement a brand new infrastructure that would support more than 100 users all over the world. It decided that Linux was the safest bet.

The much-awaited breakthrough year for the open source desktop may never come. But that doesn't mean that Linux won't slowly work its way onto your PC. Progress may be slow, but it's happening

Jitterbit 1.0.1 is a general maintenance release of the open source integration software. It includes a number of important bug fixes, including changes to the way Jitterpaks are created and some issues with the Fixed Field Complex text structures. It is recommended that users upgrade from 1.0.

'MugShot’ Premiers – It’s Red Hat’s Open Source Counter to MySpace Phenomenon and More, Hatters Say

Free software isn't communist, but does that make it American?

[It may not be especially American, but that doesn't mean it isn't American - dcparris]

The 451 Group has published Part II of a four-part series featuring comments by Canonical CEO and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, along with the reactions from 451 analysts who cover open source and enterprise software.

Nashville, Tenn. -- My only real problem with this year's Red Hat Summit was trying to decide which talks to attend whenever I wasn't writing, eating, or partying. The problem wasn't finding sessions I was interested in, but deciding which one to attend when several appealing talks were happening at the same time. Here's a brief recap of what I learned in three of the 90 break-out sessions available to attendees.

Mark Shuttleworth discusses the recent release of Dapper Drake along with the recent partnership agreement with Sun: http://tllts.org/archives/tllts_142-05-31-06.ogg
http://tllts.org/archives/tllts_142-05-31-06.mp3

The interview with Mark starts at 34:18

Linux Gazette #127 is now available.

• Talkback, by Kat Tanaka Okopnik
• The Mailbag, by Kat Tanaka Okopnik
• News Bytes, by Howard Dyckoff
• FVWM: How Styles are Applied, by Thomas Adam
• FvwmEvent: conditional window checking by example, by Thomas Adam
• With Knoppix at a HotSpot, by Edgar Howell
• Review: amaroK (audio player for KDE), by Pankaj Kaushal
• State of the antispam regime, by Rick Moen
• Ecol, by Javier Malonda
• The Linux Launderette

Debian.org reports - The Debian Installer team is proud to announce the second beta release of the installer for Debian GNU/Linux Etch. Our thanks to everybody who has contributed to this release. Special thanks go out to our friends from Ubuntu... The graphical installer is not part of this release... OSDir did a quick Debian install to check out progress on the new Debian installer. Check it out in the Debian Installer Etch Beta 2 Screenshot Tour.