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Sun Sees Huge Demand for 'Galaxy' Sun Fire(TM) Servers Powered by AMD Opteron(TM) Processors

A report by Gartner claims that Novell's stiffest competition for the small and medium business server space will come not from Microsoft, but Apple.

Allen Gunn spends most of his time helping NGOs understand and use free software. In an interview with Richard Frank, he discusses the benefits - and possible pitfalls - of libre open source software.

While much of the wired world has been swept off its feet by the free and open source software (FOSS) revolution, Africa has lagged behind. Certain barriers have hindered Africans from taking advantage of the benefits of platforms like Linux

White Box Enterprise Linux (WBEL), a free Linux distribution, includes a number of user-friendly features that add up to a useful and functional operating system. Over the years, my Linux installs have progressed from Debian 2.0 to SUSE 6.3 to SUSE 8.0 to Red Hat 9, and finally to WBEL 3.0, and I'm extremely pleased with my latest setup.

A mobile phone and telecom software testing and development services company with offices in Finland and China is seeking partners to help it create a versatile mobile phone reference design based on MontaVista Linux CEE (consumer electronics edition), Trolltech's Qtopia interface software, and Texas Instruments's (TI's) OMAP2420 SoC (system-on-chip).

Last time we checked, it was possible to run Linux on a Treo 650 -- barely. Back in December, we caught sight of a 650 that could boot Linux, but running actual apps appeared to be a distant dream. Well, it looks like the dream has come true. The pics above are part of a series that purportedly shows a Treo 650 running GPE Linux -- and running it well, from the looks of things. Of course, we'd still like to see it running Doom, but we suspect that can't be too far off.

THERE is now a brewing issue on whether government should use Microsoft or open source-based software in the second phase of the "PCs for Public Schools Project" of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), says a government source privy to the bidding.

[Ed: This article focuses on the battle for educational institutions in the Philipines. - dcparris]

Hi,

thanks to a few fellows effort, a community-oriented e-magazine dedicated to Mandriva Linux latest developments - "Mandriva Linux Inside" - was born today.

Vendors provide some fixes, and in some cases, just advice. Plus: WatchRight noses in on your instant messages.

Like other operating systems, GNU/Linux is starting to add increased support for international characters. The support is spotty in places, and varies between systems because of differences in keyboards, distributions, fonts, and program support. Even so, if you make a few configuration changes, you can use the keyboard to enter the characters for dozens of languages with only a few problems.

Alan Cox [interview] offered an updated libATAPATA (IDE) status report. He summarized, "with the exception of HPA and serialize support its now pretty close to a straight replacement for drivers/ide on x86 systems (and boxes using PCI devices only). There is other stuff that wants improving still like error recovery on CRC, but its getting close."

He provides a list of recent changes then cautions, "please remember that functionality equivalence, and much cleaner code doesn't mean less bugs yet, there is a *lot* of testing and hammering on the code needed before it is production ready for switching." His current patch is for the 2.6.16-rc2 kernel.

A Silicon Valley startup claims to have come up with a search engine for source code and code-related information. (Linux-Watch)

Hamilton, Ontario, Linux and open source enthusiasts were privileged to hear former Red Hat CEO Bob Young, author and Unix historian Peter Salus, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Ren Bucholz banter about SCO vs. Linux and other patent and copyright issues at a meeting of the Hamilton Linux User Group last week. Outside of the discussion that went on, there were interesting dynamics among the speakers and also between the panel and audience.

WILMINGTON, Del./EWORLDWIRE/Feb. 6, 2006 --- Shop-Script PRO, the middleweight member of Shop-Script family, gained in weight and lost in price. WebAsyst LLC has revamped the script, making it an even more powerful e-commerce tool: now it boasts many features that were previously available only to owners of Shop-Script Premium, the top product of the line.

Users of Microsoft’s Office and Access packages have been told they will have to install updates as a result of a patent infringement dispute between Microsoft and a Guatemalan inventor that has cost the software firm almost $9 million in damages.

[Ed: The article points out that technical, as well as legal, challenges apply in this situation. Gartner recommends using a version of MS Office without MS Access where not needed. Linux News recommends using OpenOffice.org or some other libre office suite where patent encumbrances of this sort are not likely to affect so many users. - dcparris]

Opinion: Novell's survey says Photoshop is the app most Linux users want ported to their desktops. So, what's it got over GIMP? (DesktopLinux)

The company behind Suse Linux tries to bring eye candy to the open-source OS. But will it make anyone more productive?

I got involved with Mozilla because I loved the idea of working on something that had the potential to make an impact on millions of people. My friends and I lived in our browsers, so there was also a tangible payoff for contributions that made it into a shipping Netscape release. After switching gears on the layout engine, it looked like Netscape needed all the help it could get. In early 1999 only the most basic elements of the old Communicator suite were in place in the new browser; you could barely browse or read mail as Netscape's engineers worked furiously to erect the framework of the application.

Richard Matthew Stallman is the founder of the Free Software movement, the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation. He has written several programs used in almost all GNU/Linux distributions, such as the GNU C Compiler, the GNU Emacs editor and the GNU Debugger, amongst others. He wrote the GNU GPL, and is also currently co-authoring version 3 of the GPL. He also gave POSIX it's name, the term used to mean most UNIX-like operating systems today. We asked him for his opinions on File Sharing, DRM and some other subjects.

LinuxP2P: What is your general opinion of Peer to Peer File-Sharing? Is it a positive or negative thing, and why?