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I remember when I first heard about MEPIS. It seems as if I blinked, and all of a sudden everyone was talking about it. It's still less than two years old, and even MEPIS founder Warren Woodford says in this interview that he is surprised by the astronomic popularity of MEPIS.

LinuxChix Africa, a non-governmental organisation for women in open source, aims to promote awareness and use of free and open source software (FOSS) at a Software Freedom Day celebration on 10 September.

New take on simplifying chaos of open-source realm connects programmers to continuous stream of relevant software updates.

Richard Stallman, father of the Free Software Foundation and Open Source has criticised the media for making too much about of the story of Linus Torvalds demanding cash from some Aussie companies to use his name on some Linux software. Stallman claims that the media has been diverting the attention from the real news which is apparently the 'freedom to change and distribute software'.

In a timely -- and enlightened -- move, Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) Latest News about Novell has expanded the OpenSuSE project and increased investment in the China market. With the launch of opensuse.org.cn, Novell signals a commitment to build a strong developer community in what is potentially the largest global market for their Linux platform. According to an article at VNUNet.com, Novell claims OpenSuSE will be the only fully localized project for a global Linux distribution in China. Well, they may be for now, but they won't be for long, you can bet on that. Novell also unveiled plans for the opening of a research and development center in Beijing, a move bound to fan the flames of the Beijing/Shanghai IT rivalry.

For those of you don't know about Rosegarden, it is an integrated audio/MIDI sequencer with advanced features, including extensive system control and impressive notation facilities. The program has been in development since the early 1990s, beginning with a GUI based on the Xaw widget set and coming at last to a beautiful Qt interface. But Rosegarden is not only a pretty face, and McIntyre is an excellent guide to what's behind the program's good looks.

Novell's recently released ZenWorks 7 adds some major new Linux functionality--but a long-term product redesign is also under way, and the first overhaul of Novell's multiplatform systems administration package could hit the streets as early as next year. Taken as a whole, ZenWorks 7 brings new support for Linux-based administration of Windows desktops through its Desktop Management component, and for Linux-based administration of Linux servers and desktops through its Linux Management component.

I know a lot of you are thinking, how can a newbie to Linux write a review of a Linux Distro ? Well, after saying a final adios to MS Windows once and for all, the jump into Linux almost felt like I was way over my head, and sinking fast. Ubuntu threw me a lifepreserver. Let me preface all of this by saying that I have loaded several different distros of Linux on my Compaq Evo N1015v laptop. I have tried SUSE 9.2, 9.3, Linspire 5.0, PCLinuxOS, etc, etc, and then Ubuntu 5.0.

In my last article on FVWM, the F Virtual Windows Manager, I wrote about its basic setup, how to create a task bar, and how to create your own menus. In this article I'll be looking at further ways of customizing the windows manager to improve the basic desktop.

The Information Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) together with the country's active ICT partners have finalized everything for a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Week.

The next stable update of the Linux kernel has been released. It was announced by an e-mail from Linux creator Linus Torvalds to the Linux kernel mailing list. The 2.6.13 release comes after a series of release candidates were being tested, a process that uncovered several problems. The release updates the kernel's file system event monitoring -- a set of system calls that lets users load another kernel from a current kernel -- and advances in the Xtensa instruction set architecture designed for embedded applications.

There's been a substantial drop in the number of companies outsourcing application development in order to utilize external skills, as more companies instead turn to outsourcing for cost savings. Just 19 per cent of those companies polled are outsourcing to tap their suppliers' expertise, down from 44 per cent in the year 2000, according to Evan Data Corp (EDC). Twenty eight per cent said cost savings was their main reason for going out of house - up from 15 per cent. Evans, who polled 400 developers for its Summer 2005 enterprise development survey, said there has been a transition in needs from firefighting to solve the year 2000 problem to on-going, low-cost management of corporate systems like enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM).

Like many companies, National Semiconductor is looking for ways to cut costs and has Linux and open source high on its list. While the company already is making the move to Linux, the big project this year is to take a close look at open source databases to figure out where less-expensive data management products could fit in its infrastructure.

The program has three categories-Platinum, Gold and Silver-for technology partners, solution providers and training partners and will help position Novell's solutions for focus customer segments

Michael Tiemann, Vice President, Open Source Affairs, Red Hat will visit India from September 12 to 14. During this visit, Tiemann is scheduled to meet a cross-section of leaders from the Indian Government, Corporates and members of the Academia.

Linus Torvalds announced the release of the 2.6.13 Linux kernel. "The most painful part of 2.6.13 is likely to be the fact that we made x86 use the generic PCI bus setup code for assigning unassigned resources," Linus began. "That uncovered rather a lot of nasty small details, but should also mean that a lot of laptops in particular should be able to discover PCI devices behind bridges that the BIOS hasn't set up." He went on to note, "we've hopefully fixed up all the problems that the longish -rc series showed, and it shouldn't be that painful, but if you have device problems, please make a report that at a minimum contains the unified diff of the output of 'lspci -vvx' running on 2.6.12 vs 2.6.13. That might give us some clues."

Welcome to our issue number 11 of Fedora Weekly News.

Novell, continuing to push hard on its open source agenda, last week announced an upgrade to its management suite that includes improved Linux support.

Microsoft approached the Open Source Development Lab about conducting a jointly-funded research study that would purportedly produce some facts-based analysis and comparisons of the two operating systems. Both Microsoft and the OSDL have been pretty tight-lipped about the discussions held during a LinuxWorld meeting between Microsoft's general manager of platform strategy, Martin Taylor, and the OSDL's CEO Stuart Cohen. However, late last week the OSDL forwarded us a statement from Cohen that explains some of the silence.

During my daily night cap on DistroWatch I came across an interesting new Linux distribution called Pocketlinux. A quick scan through the release announcement said 'pocketlinux is a new Slackware-based distribution created by former developers of the Bonzai Linux distribution. Its main features are a simplified Slackware installer...' Whoa... okay I've read enough... where's the download link? You have to understand that I install a lot of distros. I've installed/Live CD booted a few Slackware based distros before like slax, Mutagenix and GoblinX which were all pretty descent (especially slax - nice job boys). When it comes to installing Slackware (here comes the hate mail), I run the other way.