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And you thought Clippy was annoying

An irritating interface could be just one of the factors that hurts uptake of Windows Vista in the enterprise, challenging Microsoft's ambitious rollout goals.

Welcome to this year's 19th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Uwe Hermann [1]investigated changelog files and recognised a number of interesting release names for packages. Several Debian developers gather in Oaxtepec, Mexico, where this year's [2]Debian Conference will take place and is preceded by a working camp that already started.

With the Gizmondo now dead and buried, there is a void for gamers who don't to play on the Sony PSP or the Nintendo DS waiting to be filled.

Motorola will demonstrate communications servers based on Linux and other open standards at the GlobalComm trade show, June 4-8 in Chicago. Faster ATCA switch fabrics and MicroTCA products will help drive adoption of modular, COTS (commercial off-the-shelf), open-standards based systems into data plane and edge applications, Motorola says.

Open Source Vendors and Projects Unite to Form Open Management Consortium

KDE and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) are proud to announce their associate status, working together for the promotion and protection of Free Software on users' desktops in Europe and worldwide.

[Wait, is that the sound of the Earth spinning to a stop? Just kidding. Now if Microsoft joined the FSF... - dcparris]

The founder of Linux says that fears that its kernel is getting buggier are 'certainly real'

Microsoft was hit with a one-two punch that could make it easier than ever for Office suite users to make the jump to open source.

In the rosy scenario provided by SSL Certificate Authorities, users would be instantly warned off when a web site contained no certification that verified its authenticity. Thus, the anti-phishing toolbar would protect the unwary from the moral turpitudes of predators. In practice, however, researchers have found that anti-phishing toolbars for web browsers that depend on verification of SSL certificates are the least likely of all to stop phishing. Email Battles explains why.

Version 1.0.0 of kGroups, an online collaborative solution based on the KINKY application framework, has been released by the University of the Western Cape and the Avoir project. It does just about everything, from CMS to wikis to blogs, for any activity where people are seperated by time, space or both.

An interesting thing is about to happen to home computing—the “Desktop” that GNU/Linux never seems able to liberate from proprietary Windows may be just about to become irrelevant. Three independent, ultra-low-end computing platforms are being released—platforms that, like the first “desktop PCs” will be mostly owned by people who’ve never owned computers before. Every one of them will run GNU/Linux!

Samsung has shipped a new Linux-based smartphone in China. The SCH-i819 targets Chinese business travelers, and is the first Linux phone to support dual-band cellular operation with both CDMA 1x (800MHz) and dual-band GSM (900/1800MHz) networks, according to Mizi Research, which supplied the phone's Linux stack.

After getting my hands dirty with nearly a dozen operating systems over the years, I find PCLinuxOS (PCLOS) comes closest to being a complete desktop solution right out of the box. Initially built on the Mandrakelinux 9.2 base, it has come a long way as an independent GNU/Linux distribution. One of the primary features Because PCLOS is a live CD, you can test your system for hardware compatibility before you install it on your hard drive.

The development of the next generation of KDE kicked off with the release of the Qt 4 toolkit and aKademy conference last August and is now in full swing. KDE sub-projects from Kate to KWin are deep in the midst of planning and coding for the next major overhaul to GNU/Linux's most popular desktop. Each of KDE's applications must be rewritten to take advantage of Qt 4 and improve the look, power, and usability of KDE. The latest development announcement is for Phonon, KDE 4's multimedia framework, and the replacement for KDE 2 and 3's aRts.

OpenLogic, an open-source software and services provider, has launched a program to offer commercial support for more than 150 open-source products, including the Apache Web server, the PostgreSQL database and the Python programming language.

This blog entry is a rarity for me: an exegesis on the deliberate disinformation of a single vendor. Of course, calling out falsehoods by some vendors is like shooting the same old fish in a barrel, but occasionally you have to haul out the firearm when they start landing in your soup.

  LXer Feature: 9-May-06

Kevin Carmony has taken the heat from some in the FOSS community for offering non-free software in Linspire, and in particular, for attempting to lure the FOSS community into contributing to Linspire via Freespire. Don Parris spoke with Linspire's Kevin Carmony to learn more about his position. Are the community's accusations fair? What other options are there?

AVerMedia technologies has today announced that it has developed drivers for its Hybrid TV Tuner product range to support the following distributions of Linux; Fedora core3, Fedora core4, Mandriva and SUSE.

In the first part of this series from Dee-Ann LeBlanc, the issue of Mono was introduced along with one of the Mono applications for GNOME adopted for Fedora Core 5. Another of these is F-Spot, a photo management and editing program that offers a nice change for those who are overwhelmed by The GIMP.

I have never been a big fan of open-source software. As a born cynic, I never quite bought into the altruistic model of development. I do, however, buy into open-source pricing models and have little doubt that in five years' time it will be the standard means of purchasing software. In short, you get the software for free but then pay an ongoing maintenance fee that includes upgrades to new versions.