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Ubuntu 6.04 (Dapper Drake) daily builds have hit the Ubuntu servers. Dapper's goals: Substantial polish and integration, software discovery and installation, make network-wide enterprise updates easy to manage, consider LSB and related certification standards and support for deployment of Dapper on mission-critical servers. Screenshots have already surfaced.

Forget viruses, 419 email fraudsters and server meltdowns. The biggest potential threat to your online security could come from the growing menace of 'click' kiddies, a leading security firm warns... A growing legion of semi-computer-literate teens short of something to do could be the biggest danger to security on the web. Where traditional hackers go after specific targets, be it a bank's database or a telecom company's corporate infrastructure, gangs of youths who barely know what they're doing are running programs causing inestimable damage to businesses and individuals alike.

After announcing GNOME would be its default desktop, Novell has decided that it will continue to support KDE on its enterprise Linux family after all.

Computers running the Linux operating system are continuing to advance into the consumer retail market, with the announcement this week that Micro Center will sell desktops and laptops running Linspire's Linux.

Red Hat Directory Server (RHDS) simplifies the management of LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) and makes high availability attainable without a lot of sweat.

If you want great gains with little pain, check out this open source LDAP-compliant server, formerly known as the Netscape Directory Server like I did. Here are the results of my first encounter.

Eurotech is readying a rugged DVR (digital video recorder) platform for trains and other harsh environments. The "Rugged DVR" is based on a passively cooled P133 or Celeron processor, with optional JPEG2000 or MPEG-4 capture/compression, GSM/GPRS (UMTS) radio, gigabit Ethernet, and hi-speed USB 2.0 ports.

When the Ubuntu Linux operating system was first announced in 2004, few could have expected to become as popular as it has. Based on the Debian distribution, Ubuntu Linux has wowed users with its simplicity and effectiveness. The mantra most frequently heard in relation to Ubuntu is: "It just works."

Since its launch, the distro's popularity has grown in leaps and bounds. It won the readers' choice award for best distro in the November edition of the Linux Journal. It's also won similar awards in the UK Linux & Open Source Awards 2005, been voted by Tux Magazine readers as their favourite Linux distribution, and won Ars Technica's best distribution award.

Seneca College's fourth annual Open Source Symposium last month drew high profile developers and thinkers from the open source community to Toronto, where they spoke on issues of copyright, literacy, and increasing content restrictions.

Dennis Walters likes to compare a computer to a car. It needs a steering wheel, doors, brakes, seats. Most important, it needs an engine to make it go. Linux is the engine that makes Walters' computer go.

The tuXlabs project, which installs Linux-based thin client computers into schools across South Africa, won the Sowetan, Old Mutual and SABC Community Builder's award last night for its achievements.

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and the maintainer of the development kernel, is cracking down on developers that add last-minute changes to the kernel.

The kernel development team recently set a policy that new features must be added to the next version of the kernel during the two weeks after the release of the previous version.

Companies shouldn't rush to upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista, according to analysts at Gartner, who believe most firms could safely hold back until 2008. The majority of improvements in Vista will be security-related and most of this functionality "is available via third-party products today", Gartner claimed in a research note published on Friday.

[Apparently the report, "Ten reasons you should and shouldn't care about Microsoft's Windows Vista client", only addresses *some* of Vista's weaknesses. They probably didn't have time to account for all of them. - Ed]

A great many people find new interfaces downright puzzling. However, most interfaces share common features. Having been there and done that, Don Parris shows the technologically challenged how to find their way around nearly any graphical interface, whether it's an operating system GUI or a new office suite.


Diggable

Big guns in the software industry are massing behind OpenDocument as government customers show more interest in open source alternatives to Microsoft's desktop software.

IBM and Sun met on Friday to discuss how to boost adoption of the standardised document format for office applications. The ODF Summit brought together representatives from a handful of industry groups and from at least 13 technology companies, including Oracle, Google and Novell.

That stepped-up commitment from major companies comes amid signs that states are seriously considering getting behind OpenDocument. James Gallt, the associate director for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, said on Wednesday that there are a number of pushes to adopt the format getting under way within state agencies.