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SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Ingram Micro Inc., the world's largest distributor of computer products, rose sharply Wednesday after it said it had struck a deal to sell a version of the Linux operating system.

The IBM Information Management group has been taken over by Ambuj Goyal following the retirement (actually she's not gone yet but will be doing so shortly) of Janet Perna. As a result, he and his team have been busy briefing analysts as to the company's plans, particularly at a recent event in Boston.

If you're new to Linux or know someone who is, here's an explanation of what's in the /etc subdirectory.

Newcomers to Linux, especially those coming from a Windows background, often find files in the /etc directory to be difficult to understand. In this article, I provide a brief explanation of some of these files and their uses. Before we dive into the /etc directory however, I would like to point out that changes to some of these files can render your system unstable or in some circumstances unbootable. I cannot emphasize enough that you should make a backup of these files before making any changes.

GoblinX is a Live-CD that is based on the excellent Slackware distribution. It is directed towards those users who appreciate quality applications and a workspace that is both practical and beautiful. GoblinX contains some of the most often used and praised applications for Linux. click on the ~Applications~ button to see which ones.

We tried. We gave up.

Dell this week received much praise for releasing a new version of its "open source" PC. The computer fits into Dell's n Series range of Windows-less systems. These ship with a copy of FreeDOS in the packaging material - but not installed on the PC - which is apparently a bizarre concession to Microsoft. While Dell garners glowing reviews for shipping such an open source OS-friendly product, the company's new E510n actually stands as yet another example of how hard Dell tries not to sell non-Microsoft gear.

Recently a reader took offense at a comment I made when I suggested that a well-defended trademark could help win Linux "a seat at the grown-ups' table." "What makes a commercial product inherently more 'grown-up' than its open source counterpart?" the reader asked.

DistroWatch reports - The Kubuntu developers are pleased to announce the Breezy Release Candidate. New in Kubuntu Breezy: KDE 3.4.2; X.org 6.8.2 - with modular packaging; Adept and Adept Updater package manager; KDE System Settings - easier Control Centre; KDE Language Packs - now on the CD; KDE Bluetooth framework; OpenOffice.org 2; GStreamer for Kaffine and amaroK media framework; Krita image editor; KLaptopDaemon - now with hibernate support; Locate File Search - find files in Konqueror; automounting for CDs and memory sticks...

OSDir has some slick shots of Kubuntu 5.10 RC.

Most of the high-profile AJAX web applications are commercial and run on corporate servers like Google Maps or Flickr. We're going to start with some lesser-know solutions that are Open Source, and can be hosted on your own PHP/MySQL enabled server.

What happened to Microsoft in Massachusetts, whose officials haven’t been convinced by the Redmond giant to wait quietly for Office 12, a product promised to be more “friendly” with the Office suite with the Open XML standard, will be a puny earthquake compared to the tsunami prepared by Japan! AP informs that the Japanese officials have started to ponder upon the introduction of Linux on governmental PCs, in order to break free from Microsoft and its Windows operating system.

Ubuntu has released a security patch to correct a vulnerability identified in GNU Texinfo. The problem is due to an error in the "textindex.c" file that creates temporary files insecurely, which may be exploited by local attackers to overwrite or create arbitrary files with the privileges of the user running the vulnerable application.

MySQL AB's imminent release of its MySQL 5.0 database will introduce new enterprise features making it more competitive with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft, but the company's CEO has maintained that it is more interested in mimicking the run-away success of Swedish retailer Ikea than any of the established database vendors.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is warning of the interoperability disadvantages and long-term higher costs of open standards and open source software again, this time calling the Massachusetts directive adopting the OpenDocument format as standard for the state "bad procurement policy."

DistroWatch reports - Featherweight Linux is a live CD based on Feather Linux, but expanded to include a minimal KDE desktop. Version 1.3 has been released.

OSDir has some great shots of Featherweight Linux 1.3.

The bundle is currently only available in Singapore. Other Chinese companies, though, are being more aggressive about supporting open source.

With 100 projects now on the SugarForge.org site, users of Sugar Open Source have a broad choice of extensions ranging from document and knowledge management systems to timesheets, database backups, data synchronization, mobile device connectors and 21 language packs.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 is now available for download. Also known as the 1.8 Beta 5 milestone, this is the last beta release of the next major Firefox update and is aimed at testers, extension/theme authors and Web developers.

Speaking at a private dinner with select captains of German industry on Wednesday, Steven Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, may have felt a small sense of triumph in his company's battle against open source software.

This tutorial shows how to develop sockets-based networking applications using Python. Python's high-level networking classes simplify the development of applications requiring application-layer networking protocols. The tutorial covers the basic sockets features of Python, using a sample chat application as a guide.

The Opera Software company has announced that the users’ interest in the add-free version of the Opera browser is still high. Since the free version of the browser was launched, over three million users have downloaded it. This free version has recorded four times more downloads than any of the previous ones, according to the company’s statistics.

This week, advisories were released for gtkdiskfree, util-linux, ClamAV, loop-aes, helix-player, backupninja, squid, mysql, ntlmaps, mysql-dfsg, gopher, prozilla, cfengine, mozilla-firefox, apachetop, drupal, mailutils, egroupware, arc, mod-auth-shadow, mason, slocate, vixie-cron, net-snmp, kernel, openssh, binutils, perl, and gdb. The distributors include Debian, Gentoo, and Red Hat.