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Attendees of the first ever Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON) in Portland, Ore., last week heard about how the thinking and approach of government agencies must change to gain the cost-savings and other advantages of open source software. The event, which drew more than 200 open source business people, government officials, and consultants, also featured debate on whether open source software communities and businesses, too, must change their thinking and approach to gain the benefits of government business.

Standardized Linux desktop components are needed in order for the Linux desktop to achieve widespread adoption, according to the Free Standards Group (FSG).

The popular GNOME (define) and KDE (define) environments are among the more popular Linux desktops, as well as up and comers like the Xfce environment. Though efforts are underway to help create some compatibility between the various desktops, to date there has not been a standards body effort to create a Linux desktop standard.

To that end, the FSG is spearheading an initiative called The Linux Standard Base Desktop Project with the aim of standardizing core pieces of the Linux desktop. The effort has already gained support from a who's who of Linux industry vendors, including Red Hat, Novell, IBM, HP, Intel and Adobe.

The Free Standards Group and its Linux Standard Base work group Tuesday announced the formation of the Linux Standard Base Desktop Project, with the support of Adobe Systems Inc., Intel Corp., IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co., Linspire Inc., Mandriva SA, Novell Inc., RealNetworks Inc., Red Hat Inc., Trolltech, Xandros Inc., and others.

The LSB (Linux Standard Base) Desktop Project's goal is to standardize common libraries and application behavior so as to make it easier for ISVs (independent software vendors) to write Linux desktop programs.

The Marathon series from ASC is the world's first Linux based communications recorder providing reliability and open source flexibility rarely found elsewhere. The feature rich series is an offering from a vendor who has its presence in more than 60 countries and forty years of experience. Designed to work with most telephone systems in use in the UAE, the range is customizable to the highest degree for use in any critical operation.

The Free Standards Group (FSG) announced the Linux Standard Base (LSB) Desktop Project today. The goal of the project is to spur widespread adoption of Linux on the desktop by providing a standard application runtime for vendors to target when writing applications for the Linux desktop. Participating in the project are Adobe, Intel, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Linspire, Trolltech, and several other companies and organizations.

Broad Vendor Support and Integrations Enable More Than 10,000 Enterprise Customers to Run Business-Critical Server Applications and Platforms in VMware Virtual Infrastructure Environments

As cross-platform development grows, programmers are turning toward open source tools that are not tied to a single platform. Even Windows development is drifting toward open source, as more .Net developers look to tools such as Mono and PHP to develop software for the Microsoft platform.

Beta tests begin on ESX Server 3 and VirtualCenter 2, two products aimed to advance the virtualization trend.

The South African trainer beat 250 other EMEA partners to claim the top spot at the Redhat Linux conference.

OSDir's has got one of their slide shows of "Klax" KDE 3.5 Beta 2.

In a tight spot? Ubuntu can bail you out.

Free Software developers from Africa are gathered at the University of the Western Cape this week for the second African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources (AVOIR) developers workshop. The developers, which come from 13 collaborating African universities, are meeting at the university to work on the AVOIR project and its core applications the KINKY application framework and the KEWL.NextGen e-learning platform.

The imminent launch of XenSource's first commercial open source solutions will kick off commoditization in the virtualization software market and threaten VMware's bread-and-butter revenues, observers predict. For Xensource, the Xen virtualization engine is a free platform service on which other value-added solutions can be built.

With a customer list that includes Opera, Skype, German Brockhaus Encylopaedia, Google Earth, Adobe Photoshop Album, and the KDE Project, Trolltech is obviously a successful company. It has grown each year since it was founded by selling products that compete with free-of-charge alternatives such as Java and .Net. It now sponsors several free software developers who share all of their work with the community under the GPL. Let's take a closer look at a company that makes money from free software.

The State Services Commission's Laurence Millar today welcomed the all-of-government license agreement between the New Zealand Department of Inland Revenue and Novell.

If you're knee-deep in an IT infrastructure project, the following will come as no surprise: Open source is popular and it's gaining ground. "It's simply growing up the stack," Mark Driver, an analyst with Gartner, said on Monday. Driver, speaking at Gartner's annual Symposium/ITExpo conference here, said one reason for the building popularity of open source is the growing adoption of open source code by proprietary, closed-source software makers like IBM and Sun.

No doubt about it: Ubuntu -- along with its cousins, Kubuntu and Edubuntu -- has become an open source big shot in just one year's time. The Debian-based distro already has succeeded in attracting thousands of satisfied users, ranging from Linux beginners to seasoned administrators.

This IDF Fall Taipei, CyberLink also demonstrated playback of HD DVD content via PowerDVD and the extensive features of all-in-one entertainment center PowerCinema Linux. A similar demonstration will be held at the IDF Fall in Shanghai next week. CyberLink SoftDMA offers the following breakthrough technologies:

Mozilla's developers built Firefox from the ground up to give third-party extension developers room to run. The results have been more successful, and more vital to the open-source browser's long-term prospects, than any of them could have imagined.

The OSDL launches the Mobile Linux Initiative, an effort to accelerate adoption of Linux in mobile phones. (LinuxDevices.com)