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Industry-Leading Technology Providers to Offer Bundled Solutions Worldwide, Including Oracle E-Business Suite and JD Edwards Products Across All Industries

Welcome to this year's 38th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The major news of the past week was, of course, the release of Slackware Linux 10.2 - a distribution with a clear focus on simplicity, stability and reliability. Next on the release calendar: Mandriva Linux 2006 - with the second release candidate announced last week, we can't be too far off from the final release. Also in this issue: an explanation about the delay of KNOPPIX 4.0 CD edition, news about a live CD that uses Xen to boot a host operating system, and two free learning resources - one for OpenBSD and one for Linux. We also take a brief look at a new book for Xandros users - Linux Made Easy. Happy reading!

No one can tell you what operating systems are best for your organization or yourself better than you can. Here are some tips for selecting the right OS for the right job.

Typing long path names at the command line can get to be a chore very quickly. Even with tab-completion, it can take a lot of typing to move from your home directory to /var/www/www.mysite.com/cgi-bin or something similar. Wouldn't it be much better if you could "bookmark" long path names and type something simple, like cdb site, to get to a directory? That's where CDargs comes in. CDargs is a program that provides bookmarks and browsing at the command line. It takes a little work to set up, but it's well worth it. I've been using this program for a few years now, and it really does help speed up work at the shell.

At face value, it might appear that BEA Systems has its work cut out for it competing with free, open source alternatives to its own commercially available WebLogic Server application server platform.

Red Hat has shed a little more light on how it intends to develop the directory and certificate management software it bought from America Online's Netscape division. But the company remains undecided as to whether it will commercialise some of the other assets it acquired in the deal, including messaging and collaboration software that analysts say could form the basis of an open-source alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server.

People attending an industry conference staged by Microsoft wouldn't ordinarily go to a session that touts programs for the rival Linux operating system. But that's what happened here this week

New administration features include a Linux-based Web Administration client and tighter integration with Web services standards, as well as back-end hooks to IBM’s DB2, WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Portal. DB2 is an option that offers much faster processing because it is a relational database and Notes is not. IBM estimates the new release will allow many customers to run up to 50% more users per server, requiring up to 25% less capacity for the same workload.

I am now releasing DVD videos of the Debconf5 sessions (plus Debian Day and some extras) in PAL format. NTSC format discs will be ready in a few days. I am starting to burn discs for those who have already ordered, and will continue doing so as orders come in.

Looking to ease the way customers manage their digital identities, Microsoft has begun working to integrate its InfoCard authentication technology with Internet Explorer and is in discussions with the Firefox and Safari browser developers to have them include the technology on their platforms. According to Microsoft officials, InfoCard integration could show up in Internet Explorer 7.0 even though InfoCard is currently not on the feature list. The goal is to improve security and privacy on the Internet using the InfoCard model, which puts users in control of their personal identity information and would eliminate the need for user names and passwords to sign into a Web site. "We are still working on if there is enough time to get this done" for Internet Explorer 7, says Michael Stephenson, Microsoft's group product manager for Windows Server. "We expect many different applications, smart apps, Web apps and browsers, to use InfoCard. Our own browser will take advantage of it."

With a host of deployments in various state government departments, Oracle has made substantial inroads in the Indian e-governance scene, says Venkatesh Ganesh

Despite its strong ties to proprietary software vendors, the Australian Taxation Office has finally dipped its toes into open source by establishing a Linux-based system for information analytics. Tax has had a Teradata warehouse for 10 years but the change program initiated by chief knowledge officer Philip Hind in November last year is a "series of activities to enhance the ATO's ability to collect and analyse data", assistant commissioner of information management John Body told Computerworld. As a result the ATO invested in Teradata's Warehouse Miner, SAS Enterprise Miner, and hired CSIRO's principal computer scientist for enterprise data mining Dr Graham Williams who pioneered open source analytics for organizations like the Health Insurance Commission and NRMA.

The Ubuntu Team is proud to announce the Preview Release of Ubuntu 5.10 - codenamed "Breezy Badger". The Preview Release includes both Install CDs and bootable Live CDs for three architectures.

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop or server, with a fast and easy install, regular releases, a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default, every other package you can imagine available from the network, a commitment to security updates for 18 months after each release and professional technical support from many companies around the world.

FUDCon London 2005, the third gathering of Fedora Users and Developers, will be held at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo UK, on the 6th of October in Olympia exhibition center, London, UK. FUDCon will feature presentations from prominent members of the Fedora Project, both from Red Hat and from the Fedora community.

FUD: An acronym for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. A typical tactic used by the opponents of open source to prevent its widespread adoption.

Con: In opposition or disagreement with; against.

FUDCon is the conference/summit that focuses on the Fedora Project and all things that go along with it. This includes infrastructure issues, both technological and govermental/intermutual, development issues, community issues, marketing issues and the state of the project address. There is no set time frame with regard to the frequency of FUDCon.

In letters addressed to Manzano and NBI Director Reynaldo Wycoco, the businessmen said law enforcers refused to include government agencies using unlicensed software in their operations. Manzano's nationwide crackdown complies with the demands of international anti-piracy groups, which have kept the Philippines in its world blacklist of countries violating intellectual property rights (IPR).

Bill Hilf runs Microsoft's open source lab at its Seattle Headquarters, overseeing research projects which involve testing Linux and interoperability functions. Formerly a Linux programmer for IBM, Mr Hilf says his role is to give an "objective" view of Linux. But he has no qualms about making sure Microsoft comes out on top. "My goal is to help Microsoft understand the phenomenon of open source software and improve our products because of that."

The RedZee toolbar comes with all the standard popup blockers, news feeds, weather and highlighting features found on other toolbars, saus RedZee. The company is currently seeking individuals to taset the Beta version of 2.0.

IT@School Project Director Biju Prabhakar has said that the objective of the government was to install free software in all the schools in the state within the next five years.

A computer professional then teaching at Middlesex Community College in Bedford and Lowell, Reposa journeyed to Honduras on a simple mission: to bring computers and computer know-how to schools that have little of both. Inspired by the results of that monthlong trip, in which he donated computers to two schools and volunteered as a computer teacher, Reposa has embarked on a long-term effort to continue that work in Honduras and possibly one day, in other poor nations...Reposa said he was able to make full use of even many of the antiquated computers by outfitting them with a Linux-based operating system

This is a very detailed tutorial about how to use the new SuSE 10.0 to set up a web, mail, and ftp server.