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Linux on HPC clusters seems to be an obvious choice. It was not, however, a forgone conclusion that Linux would end up leading the supercomputing parade when Tom Sterling and Don Becker used it to build the first Beowulf cluster. Inquiring minds want to know "Why Linux on Clusters?"

Cox told ZDNet UK that he thinks many of the changes in GPL 3 are sound: "The majority of it looks very sensible, such as letting copyright information be displayed in an About box, rather than relying on command line instructions [as is the case in GPL 2]. Some of the more contentious stuff has sensibly been made optional," he said, in an interview with ZDNet UK.

KDE 3.5.1 was released today, featuring fixes to over 150 reported bugs and many other small improvements making this the most stable and feature-rich Unix desktop ever

If you're investigating Sun's StarOffice as a replacement for Microsoft Office, you'll need to address the conversion question. While StarOffice can read Microsoft Office documents pretty well, the two products' macro languages are incompatible. Sun's StarOffice Enterprise Tools aim to help. The Professional Analysis Wizard and the Macro Migration Wizard are bundled at no extra charge as part of an enterprise license of SO (though you can't download them from the Web). Whether they can help you depends on how many Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations you need to convert -- and don't expect miracles.

The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice 1.5 beta 1, the first preview release for KOffice 1.5, scheduled for release this March.

Dutch TV programme Nieuwslicht (Newslight) is claiming that the security of the Dutch biometric passport has already been cracked. As the programme reports here, the passport was read remotely and then the security cracked using flaws built into the system, whereupon all of the biometric data could be read.

The first Icasa licence for an Asterisk-based PBX has been awarded to OpenVoice Holdings. The switching system licence means that OpenVoice's Asterisk PBX may be legally connected to the telecommunications grid.

The state has appointed a new CIO and made it clear that his job will be to forge ahead with implementing the controversial OpenDocument format.

z/OpenGate(TM) is a 2U (3.5 inches) rack mount unit designed for high availability and redundancy featuring a SUSE Linux OS, dual Intel XEON(R) processors, hot swappable power supplies, and internal mirrored disks.

When Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn resigned his post in December, citing political turmoil that threatened to derail the state’s adoption of an open-standards format for software, the behind-the-scenes battle between open-standards advocates and proprietary vendors went public. On one side sits Microsoft Corp. On the other side are open-standards advocates and vendors. They’re fighting for fair competition that doesn’t give Microsoft undue advantage because of what critics charge are the company’s long-standing relationships with most state governments.

[Ed: The real lesson here is for public officials to stand firm. Be sure to cover your bases, but definitely stand firm. - dcparris]

There's an interesting new open source project called openQRM, billed as a "cluster resource manager." It's currently around 73 on SourceForge, and has been up in the top 50 recently. It was released under a modified version of the Mozilla Public License by Qlusters, a company that was founded by openMosix developer Moshe Bar and that I've repeatedly met with at LinuxWorld Expos. I just talked to a colleague of mine, William Hurley, who recently took a job as Qlusters CTO.

Until very recently the majority of intra-African Internet traffic was routed via international exchange points rather than being routed within the continent. While a number of recently established exchange points on the continent have started to alter that reality there is still a lack of reliable historical data about African Internet traffic. The African IXP Research project has been working on developing some of these required numbers and has released it analysis tool as an open source project.

HMS selected an SGI Altix 3700 Bx2 supercomputer powered by 144 Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors and 288GB of memory, and running Novell SUSE(R) Linux(R) Enterprise Server 9 to Meet Challenges of Ultra Short-Range Forecast Codes to Protect Lives and Property Throughout Hungary

Novell Inc has announced that it is bundling training and advanced support free of charge with its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server product, undercutting rival Red Hat Inc, and introducing a new priority support version targeted at small-to-medium enterprises.

The Romney administration not only picked a new permanent CIO, but used the opportunity to make a statement that no one could miss that it is four-square behind ODF, and is making a political investment in making sure that nothing will stop it

Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business - desktop software. A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the Gnome desktop, it is known internally as 'Goobuntu'.

MySQL AB, developer of MySQL, an open source database, was awarded a five-year GSA contract, GS-35F-0131R Schedule 70, providing government the ability to conveniently purchase and deploy MySQL database solutions.

Government organizations that currently use MySQL include Los Alamos National Labs, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Geological Survey, NASA and the Department of Defense.

Opinion: It's CFOs and dollars, not CIOs and gigabytes, that determine what technology companies buy. (Linux-Watch)

Samba OXtender Adds File and Print Services for Windows Workstations to Leading Open Source Collaboration Platform

User level: Advanced Most Linux users are familiar with the top command, typically used to examine the system load on a local PC and others on the network. However, have you considered using top to monitor your system automatically and to warn you when a server is being overloaded?