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One of my biggest pet peeves with open source software is what I call the CVS cop-out. It works like this: I criticize (accurately) some shortcoming of an open source application either in an article or in conversation, and someone responds with, "That's not true! That feature was fixed in CVS four weeks ago!"

The OpenVZ worldwide user community reports positive feedback on the operating system virtualization project, including those who prefer OpenVZ (http://openvz.org) over their experience with other open source virtualization initiatives.

FreeCast 20060515 brings new major features like NAT traversal and embedded Ogg Vorbis encoder.

DistroWatch states The AUSTRUMI mini live CD has been updated to version 1.2.0 - now with a surprise switch to Enlightenment 17 as its window manager. From the changelog: Removed OpenBox and added Enlightenment; updated AbiWord, Bash, Firefox, Linphone, nmap, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, SDL, XMail; added d4x - downloader for X; added DECO - a visual interface for the UNIX operating system; removed e3, fbpanel, MySQL; updated kernel to 2.6.16.14. OSDir has some great shots of AUSTRUMI in the AUSTRUMI 1.2.0 Screenshot Tour.

What's inside Issue 12 of Free Software Magazine...

On May 15th Mark Golden wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal titled Out The Window where he posed the question: “Can the ordinary user ditch Windows for Linux?” His conclusion, in most cases, is a resounding no. Sadly Mr. Golden’s methodology in trying out Linux for his article bears little resemblance to what an ordinary user trying out Linux would likely do. Indeed, his approach almost guaranteed his results.

A five-day sponsored workshop on Web caching and bandwidth management is to be held in Cape Town in July. The organisers of the event are targeting university and research organisation administrators and will focus heavily on using Linux and Squid for large network bandwidth control.

By using Writer's hide functions, you no longer need to worry about multiple versions of a document remaining in sync.

Why would you want to hide content in an OpenOffice.org Writer document? The most common reason is to maintain two similar versions of a document within the same file.

"Businesses and governments are sometimes afraid [of Linux] because they're unsure where the support is coming from," she says. "I say, don't ever be afraid of that, because when you need the support, it's out there in the form of the open source community. It's much better than anything we've ever paid for."

[Thanks to henke54 for this story -- grouch]

Google has dropped Trillian from its Google Pack software suite with nary an explanation, prompting a terse reaction from Cerulean Studios, maker of the popular instant messaging application.

LynuxWorks says L-3 Display Systems chose its Linux-like LynxOS-178 real-time OS for the cockpit display system in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Key selection criteria included adherence to open standards, Linux compatibility, interoperability benefits of a POSIX API, and support for ARINC-653, according to the company

Network managers at Middlebury College in Vermont have created an open source application that watches entries in log files, analyzes them and triggers actions such as alerting administrators, quarantining a user, or shutting down a switch port.

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A big part of Privateye's appeal is its relative simplicity. Two IT staffers at the college wrote the program in PHP, a widely used scripting language.

The amaroK Project shipped a major update of the amaroK "Fast Forward" audio player, v1.4, on May 17.

The first draft of Open XML has been posted for public viewing - and it's bigger than ever.

  LXer Feature: 20-May-06

LXer's Don Parris called into question the so-called "research" presented in an article by Steven Titch, a senior fellow at Heartland Institute, regarding the OpenDocument decision in Massachusetts. What follows is his letter to Titch, with the article referenced and linked.

Imagine how useful it would be to have an online knowledge base that can easily be updated created by key people within your organization. That's the promise of a wiki -- a Web application that "allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily," as Wikipedia, perhaps the best-known wiki, puts it. Why not bring the benefits of a wiki to your organization?

So, in the spirit of the previous KDE PIM meeting, Annahoeve in Achtmaal, The Netherlands, will again be visited by a group of KDE developers. From Friday the 26th to Sunday the 28th of May, more than 15 developers from 4 continents will have a unique chance to talk about and work on Multimedia in KDE.

Europe will host the 3rd international GPLv3 conference on June 22nd & 23rd. The conference will take place in Barcelona, Spain, and the exact venue will be announced soon.

Mandriva Linux released a pair of new services this week. Mandriva Kiosk is a web-based, click-through software installation service, similar in many ways to Linspire's "Click N Run" (CNR), while Mandriva Pulse is the company's new open source system for deploying and managing Linux on large, complex networks, the company said.

The position of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) was today strengthened by the K Desktop Environment (KDE) joining the ODF Alliance. KDE joins other partners such as Oracle, SUN Microsystems, Mandriva, IBM and Junta de Andalucia in promoting the OpenDocument Format as a market leader in document exchange and storage.