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Customers Gain flexibility Along with Greater Application and Hardware Compatibility to Meet the Needs of Information Workers Across the Enterprise

Welcome to this year's 37th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. Last week was an exciting one - besides GNOME 2.12 and the first beta release of Firefox 1.5, four major Linux distributions have been sprinting towards the finishing line, with the brand new Slackware Linux 10.2 release now imminent and the other three following within the next few weeks. In the meanwhile, Debian has announced security support for its testing branch, a move that will likely be greeted with much enthusiasm among the Debian users. Also in this week's issue: Microsoft tries to recruit a well-known open source advocate, a brief look at Foresight Linux and a quick review of Linux+ DVD, a popular European Linux magazine. Happy reading!

OpenSUSE.org is off to a strong start, generating extensive interest and support from both the development community and end users. Within the first few weeks, registered installations of the SUSE Linux distribution have soared to more than 5,000 per day, with a copy downloaded every 18 seconds.

OK, you laggardly louts late to the Linux party, listen up! This week's column is all about power to the people. Command line power. Power that keeps working while you're off lollygagging. We're talking about wget: the behind-the-scenes, under-the-hood, don't-need-watching, network utility that speaks HTTP and FTP with equal fluency. Wget allows you to create your own personal version of a web site on the Internet that you can peruse offline at your leisure, or retrieve the complete contents of a distribution directory on a remote FTP site.

aLinux, formerly known as Peanut Linux, is a strange GNU/Linux distribution. It bills itself as a "Professional Linux Operating System" for advanced users, hobbyists, and new Linux users. However, the distribution has a number of problems that make it unsuitable for new users and unpleasant even for experienced users. It claims to be "professional," yet it's harder than heck to install and configure. On paper, aLinux 12.5 looks like a great desktop distro, but it's lacking in several areas.

VMware Workstation 5.5 Features Support for 64-bit Guests for AMD64 Technology Systems and Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) Systems with Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) and Two-Way Virtual SMP

In a report to be presented at the World Bank on Friday, a group that includes senior government officials from 13 countries will urge nations to adopt open information technology standards as a vital step to accelerate economic growth, efficiency and innovation.

Under a much-lambasted licensing programme, SCO has been offering a licence to companies who use Linux, saying that it will protect from action by its legal department. But very few companies have acquiesced to what many see as a groundless threat and this programme, called SCO Source, brought in revenues of just US$32,000 during the quarter, compared to SCO's overall legal costs of US$3.1m.

He has fans all over the world. Every week he provides us with news from the latest and greatest straight out of the KDE SVN tree.

At the build system BoF at aKademy it was decided to start moving the KDE 4 build system from unsermake to the SCons/Python based system bksys. To find out more about this important future technology, KDE Dot News talked to its lead developer Thomas Nagy about the reasons behind the change and what it will mean for KDE developers.

From high atop the lofty tower of their new (but still secret) location in Chicago, Kevin Hill and Jeff Gerhardt announced today the long awaited return of THE LINUX SHOW!!

A vulnerability was identified in GNU Mailutils, which could be exploited by remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands. This flaw is due to a format string error in the "util_finish()" function that does not properly handle specially crafted "SEARCH" commands, which could be exploited by authenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands on a vulnerable system.

After quitting work on Xgl I received a lot of email and read a lot of posts. My conclusion is that most people don’t really know what is going on with graphics in Linux. It’s understandable that people don’t see the whole picture. Graphics is a large and complex area with many software components and competing developer groups. I’ve written this as an attempt to explain how all of the parts fit together.

Most people don’t really know what is going on with graphics in Linux. It’s understandable that people don’t see the whole picture. Graphics is a large and complex area with many software components and competing developer groups. I’ve written this article as an attempt to explain how all of the parts fit together.

Brendan Eich sent us a link to his weblog post about using Python for XUL scripting. At the moment, only JavaScript can be used for scripting in XUL applications but Brendan describes how Mark Hammond is adding support for the popular Python programming language as well. Support for Python in XUL will land in the Mozilla 1.9 timeframe and is expected to be used primarily by developers of extensions and standalone XULRunner applications.

Microsoft on Friday issued a mea culpa for not doing its due diligence before sending Linux and open-source luminary Eric Raymond an e-mail expressing interest in having him work for the Redmond software giant. But Microsoft Corp. spokesman Mark Martin told eWEEK on Friday that the company remains committed to employing talented people—regardless of their background. "Microsoft is always looking to hire talented people from across the industry—including those in the open-source community. While, in this case, we didn't do our full due diligence, we encourage and benefit from a diversity of perspectives at Microsoft," he said.

They have all struggled in some degree to find a successful direction in China. For Microsoft, they have faced piracy issues and a government that has been more pro-Linux. Yahoo (YHOO) recently invested in AliBaba, the Chinese portal to help improve customer awareness. Google invested in Baidu, (BIDU) having gradually lost its market share to the (Chinese) home-grown search engine. So, in short, each is still trying to find its way. They all seem to realize that China represents a big upside and the long-term benefits are worth the challenges.

For a smooth transition without loss of C&C, loading activities will be switched between Primary, Standby and Backup MDMs as required. Three A31p laptops plus one spare hard drive have already been prepared ( ghosted) by the crew for the new software version. Altogether there are 12 R9-capable PCS A31p laptops available on board, three more than the minimum required to support the transition. Version R9 is very powerful, built on version R8 but with new laptop platforms (A31p ThinkPads), a new Operating System (Linux instead of Solaris), the Mission 12A baseline configuration plus two deltas (patches) for post-12A.1 and post-13A, improved performance, over 6400 displays (>130,000 data points monitored, >50,000 command instances, >17,000 navigation choices), etc.].

Home users who want to build their own Web pages instead of using somebody else's prefab templates haven't had great options. Microsoft's $199 FrontPage is a clunky product that produces clunky pages, and higher-end products such as Adobe's GoLive and Macromedia's Dreamweaver, each $399, are far too complicated and expensive for home use. But a new software prodcut called Nvu (pronounced "n-view") provides a much-needed alternative. This open-source release comes from Linux distributor Linspire, but it runs in Windows and Mac OS X. It does what other Web-creation programs only promise: make it easy to create Web pages without your having to learn the peculiar argot of the Web's HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Nvu looks and works like a word processor: You type text into a blank page, then click on one toolbar button or another to add formatting, insert images or stitch in links to other sites. (Unlike Microsoft Word and its ilk, however, Nvu can't check your spelling as you type, only afterward.)

The Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC) filed dissolution papers with the state of California yesterday, ending a five year run promoting embedded LInux and developing standards for it. The ELC's primary piece of intellectual property -- the ELC Platform Specification -- has been transferred to the OSDL (Open Source Development Labs), which could move the standard forward, given sufficient member interest. The ELC kicked off in March of 2000, at the Embedded Systems Conference in Chicago, where according to Murry Shohat, cofounder and executive director, 85 industry executives and managers "formed a loud and vocal chorus of people who wanted traction for Linux. We left that building with a strong mission to promote and publicize Linux as an embedded operating system."