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Despite predictions of its demise, Unix — and in particular, Sun's Solaris flavor — appears to be convalescing instead of following the downward spiral that's typical for operating systems that fall from grace (the PalmOS for example).

A project to create a lightweight, embeddable database is beta testing its second release. Firebird 2.0 features derived tables, support for "execute block," increased table sizes, improved index code, and numerous other improvements. Beta kits are available for Linux on i686, i686-NPTL, and AMD64, as well as Windows.

As part of an update to OpenSolaris, the company this week released the source code for ZFS, a system for managing data and files. Sun released the first portion of code for its OpenSolaris project in June of this year. It has released additional pieces since then.

People are daring to dream bigger. With the advent of OpenOffice.org, often trumpeted as an Office-killer, not to mention the resurgence of Apple as a brand and Mac as a platform, we are beginning to see a new message emerge out here in punditland: maybe it's not enough to just cut the cord. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to go on the attack.
Diggable

On Friday, November 18, representatives from Sun Microsystems joined members of Dartmouth's Computer Science Department to officially launch a collaboration involving Dartmouth's Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Laboratory. The new partnership pairs Dartmouth's expertise in secure and trusted computing with Sun's OpenSolaris Project, an open source operating system that is being enhanced through community input and dialogue.

Core KDE developer George Staikos recently hosted a meeting of the security developers from the leading web browsers. The aim was to come up with future plans to combat the security risks posed by phishing, ageing encryption ciphers and inconsistent SSL Certificate practise. Read on for George's report of the plans that will become part of KDE 4's Konqueror and future versions of other web browsers.

IBM Corp. has won a deal for its 64-bit Power5 Unix servers with China's State Administration of Taxation, that it says represents the company's largest Unix installation in Asia.

The Chinese taxation authority has already installed over 100 IBM servers, a mix of eServer p5 595 and p5 570 machines, according to Karl Freund, vice president of Unix strategy at IBM. The installation will rank among the company's top 10 largest Unix customers, he said.

An AIX based compiler providing implementation for Unified Parallel C (UPC) High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications on large-scale, parallel processing machines. While within an HPC/large scale parallel environment running AIX, the user would simply compile their UPC code with this compiler (xlupc) and have an appropriate object file generated. The compiled executable then can be utilized in HPC environments.

  LXer Thanksgiving Day Feature

Linux News pauses to give thanks for libre software, the libre community, and most of all for freedoms that cannot be easily rescinded.

Editor's Note: This is the first installment in a periodic series ENP regular Deann Corum will be writing on about her experiences moving from a Windows-centric environment to a new job with an emphasis on Linux.

[Ed: This is an interesting take on changing environments. - dcparris]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with two leading national class action law firms, today filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG, demanding that the company repair the damage done by the First4Internet XCP and SunnComm MediaMax software it included on over 24 million music CDs.

Apple has worked on Mac OS X for the past 4 years, and its market share has grown steadily. Now, Apple looks to be making a comeback in the operating system industry. Can it dethrone Microsoft's Windows?

You can crab all you want about vendor-sponsored research, such as the many studies that Microsoft has sponsored directly or endorsed as it tries to fight off the onslaught of Linux, but it does one very practical thing. The heated competition and even more heated words are, of course, amusing, but the truth is, the analytical weapons that the Windows allies and the Linux allies are deploying are getting more sophisticated. And this is a good thing for customers, even if it makes life difficult for commercial Linux distributors and Microsoft.

Bivio 500 8-Port Expands Network Coverage Capacity for Security and Communications Network Applications to Manage Network Traffic at Multi-Gigabit Speeds

With the Open Source desktop getting larger and more complex, the world need a special type of hacker. Bow down to the speed demon and their abilities to make the world start-up quicker...

Take a look at a currently-running Dell ad that MacDailyNews reader "Scotty" pointed out to us recently: Note the not-so-subtle attempt to evoke the feeling of Apple's Mac OS X out-of-the-box default desktop. Apple uses this "look" in all of their promotional materials, including PowerBooks. How much has Apple invested in promoting this "look," so that Dell can paste a derivative of it onto the screens of their garbage laptops?

I recently took a briefing from a company called OpenMFG, with the distinct hope that my skepticism about the role of open source in the ERP market would be dashed.

this early-stage vendor purports to have the first open source ERP product on the market. It's definitely an ERP product, albeit one that is considerably less functional than many. But when you dig under the covers, the reality is that OpenMFG's so-called open source process is not much different than any other vendor's software development process. OpenMFG was built, to give them credit, on top of a healthy assortment of open source tools. But the initial development was done by OpenMFG employees, and the upgrade and enhancement process, while purporting to be open source, is really just a clever modification of the way software has always been enhanced.

At the 18th annual Supercomputing conference held last week at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, vendors combined forces in an effort to spread supercomputing beyond its academic and research roots.

Leading the charge was Microsoft. The software giant used the conference as a launch pad for its formal entry into the market dominated by Linux.

Xinhua.net, as translated by USITO.org, is reporting that China's Open Source Software Promotion Union (OSS) says it will have a "new Linux standard" early next year.

It may not have quite the same thrilling finish, but you need wait no longer for a new Triple Crown winner--we've just published the third jewel in our Linux Triple Crown: What Is a Linux Distribution, which follows the publications of What Is Linux and What Is a Linux Desktop, respectively. Each article is intended to introduce your friends, family members, and co-workers to the world you know so well, and maybe enlighten you in some untold way as well.