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Linspire Professional, aimed at challenging the enterprise desktop Linux market leadership of Red Hat and Novell SUSE, will not actually be a new version of the company's user-friendly Linux distribution. Instead, it will offer enhanced, enterprise-oriented features relating to the use of Linspire's popular CNR (Click 'n' Run) software delivery subscription technology.

A major update to the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), widely regarded as the leading free software raster image editing program, is scheduled for this month. The 2.4 release is expected to include a number of new features and enhancements to existing features.

If the BIOS is not password protected, the attacker doesn't even need a screwdriver. He or she can hack into a Windows- or Linux-based computer by using only two items: a KNOPPIX CD and a USB key. KNOPPIX is a Linux distribution that is available for free at knoppix.com and that can be burned onto a single CD. The attacker can boot KNOPPIX from the CD and then copy everything from the hard drive to the USB key. (If the BIOS has been set to disallow booting from the CD drive, the attacker needs only one additional item: a KNOPPIX boot floppy disk, which is available from the same site as the KNOPPIX CD.)

Loiacono said that, because customers are asking what else is out there, Sun is taking a serious look at solving that problem by addressing some of the need in that space. "We're not going to OEM Microsoft but we are looking at PostgreSQL right now," he said, adding that over time the database will become integrated into the operating system.

"Bush's most recent Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, successfully argued that people who were sold defective software by Microsoft weren't "injured," and couldn't participate in a class action against the company. The case involved unstable compression features in MS DOS 6.0, which were corrected by a $9.95 update, MS DOS 6.2. Plaintiffs wanted Microsoft to offer the updates for free, but eventually lost to Miers' arguments."

Microsoft Corp. is funding computer centers it hopes will reach half a million poor South Africans and argued on Monday that free open source software is not always the best option for developing countries. (In other words - Microsoft has decided to take on Mark Shuttleworth -Ed.)

At 11:59pm Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -0700) on Monday, the Mozilla development tree was locked down in preparation for the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 (also known as the 1.8 Beta 5 milestone). This means that no more checkins will be accepted for inclusion in the second Firefox 1.5 beta, which is set for release on Wednesday.

Opinion: We were hoping for the next great moment in office software. We got"Google Toolbar as an option in its consumer downloads of the Java Runtime Environment."

Dell's new Dimension offers SOHO customers a PC that comes without a Microsoft operating system, but that's as far as it goes.

Online auction news site AuctionBytes is reporting that some eBay sellers have started a petition to persuade the auction giant to support Mozilla Firefox and other alternative browsers. According to the article, some features on the eBay Sell Your Item page are optimised for Microsoft Internet Explorer and do not work correctly in Firefox and other browsers.

Information technology at Bryant University was a twisted potpourri of hardware and software before Linux came along. The concept of a centralized data center seemed unreachable amid the university's eclectic mix of Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Dell hardware, but it was something that president Ronald Machtley wanted addressed by those in IT. According to Art Gloster, the Smithfield, R.I. university's vice president for information services, the school -- now ranked the second most wired university by the Princeton Review – had "a little bit of everything and not much of anything."

Latest version features new parallel processing capabilities; additional platform support

DistroWatch reports - ATmission is a Fedora-based live CD designed to allow users to experiment with the Linux operating system and other open source software without having to install anything on a hard disk. Version 2.0 has been released: Based on the Fedora Core 4 release with Linux kernel 2.6.11...

Jacques sent in to OSDir some very cool shots ATmission 2.0-01 (reloaded).

Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Donald Feinberg, vice-president of Gartner [1]predicted the end of Unix in 10-15 years and the rise of GNU/Linux.

I'm 32 and counting, South African, living in London. Most of my time is devoted to the Ubuntu project as cheerleader and chief whip. I've spent the last year or so focused on the Launchpad collaborative infrastructure, writing a fair portion of it and helping the team to define our goals. It's a thrill to see it all coming on stream! More details at [WWW] markshuttleworth.com.

WHILE SEVERAL Linux based vendors showed up at this year's exhibition like last year, the only major distributor present was Red Hat. The company's booth seemed to attract even more people than last year.

Optus@Home will complete its integration of the Excite@Home Australia network across to the same architecture as its dial-up service reports Fairfax IT in this article. The transition involves moving the network across from the legacy Excite network to a network of "incredibly powerful" Linux servers, a spokeswoman for Optus said today.

Microsoft Professionals provide an adbundance of applicants for infrastructure. Disheartening as it seems, corporations, governments, start-ups and small business have difficulty recruiting and retaining talented Linux IT workers. That has become a familiar refrain whenever Linux fails the adoption test in many places across the globe.

OpenAdvantage is an IT consultancy based in the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom. As the name suggests, OpenAdvantage deals strictly in open source software solutions, providing its clients with everything from a basic introduction to open source, to custom development services. The best part? It's all free -- free as in beer.

“We hope to reach perhaps 500000 or more people who don’t today have access to information technology,” he said.