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Mozilla announced Friday that its Firefox Web browser had reached the 50 million download mark, less than six months after its official launch last November.
The news comes just a day after research firm OneStat.com released its latest figures showing that Mozilla browsers are still gaining market share, although at a slower rate.
Research by XiTi-monitor also showed Firefox now has a market share of 13,3% in Europe, with a record market share of 31% in Finland.

The biggest pro's with Gentoo are that you can setup what are called USE flags. Basically they're like meta-flags which tell the compiled packages what to build into your system. For example, if I add "mysql" to my USE variable, all packages that have mysql support will be built with mysql enabled. Likewise, there are flags for everything from kde, gnome, and X to the basics like alsa, and ssl. This produces an amazingly targeted and fat-free system that only has what you want it to have. In theory this sounds great, in practice it's absolutely mind-blowing. You want all your packages to suddenly support postgres, just add it to your USE flag, and run 'emerge --newuse world' and any packages that can provide postgres support will be re-built. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

A few months ago I moved from New York to Florida, leaving behind all of the friends and family that depended on me for computer support. At least once per month I used to get a phone call asking me to go to someone's house and reinstall Windows or fix some other software problem. Rarely was there an actual hardware problem -- usually all I had to do was back up some personal data and reinstall Windows. But it's impossible to do that remotely, and I had no desire to spend hours on the phone after I moved walking people through driver downloads and various other tasks related to setting up a Microsoft operating system. So, two weeks before I left, I moved several of my accidental "clients" to GNU/Linux and helped them make the transition. The result, after six months, is an end to the annoying phone calls and a much easier time diagnosing hardware problems.

Part 2 of Doc's thinking about Tom Friedman's new bestseller, from a Linux/open source angle.

Novell has decided to get more involved in promoting Linux and the Open Source initiative on the Chinese market and the first step was the signing of a contract with China Standard Software.

Agreement With China Standard Software Company Calls for Joint Technical, Marketing and Support Efforts to Accelerate Adoption of Linux.

We've put together a series of Windows XP, SUSE 9.3 and Ubuntu 5.04 desktop screen shots as a side-by-side comparison of some of the common desktop features available in the modern operating system desktop.

The UK subsidiary of security software firm Fortinet has settled an action brought against it because it was allegedly not complying with the terms of the General Public Licence (GPL), which underpins the distribution of most open source software.

This chapter introduces you to Linux Desktop's graphical user interface, which allows you to navigate the operating system. While this chapter is geared toward Linux novices, there are some hints and tips that will help even the experienced Linux user.

What began as the ‘free software’ movement, thanks to Richard Stallings, has matured over the years. It is not just a posturing alternative to the commercial ‘closed’ software.

E-books are a disappointing flurry of vendor-specific formats. Get them converted to HTML to view on your choice of device.

Is Linux about to "make it big" on a lot more desktops worldwide? Executives from Novell and IBM expressed diametrically opposing opinions on this question, in a panel discussion at last week's "Linux on Wall Street" conference that also touched on the server and IP (intellectual property) sides of Linux. Jacqueline Emigh reports.

My previous article, Making Packager-Friendly Software, explains why software packaging is sometimes problematic due to real problems in the mainstream sources. It also discusses many issues that affect the distribution files and the configuration scripts (the most visible items when trying out a new program). This part explores the problems found in the build infrastructure and the code itself.

From server to handsets - the struggle continues

The UK subsidiary of security software firm Fortinet has settled an action brought against it because it was allegedly not complying with the terms of the General Public Licence (GPL), which underpins the distribution of most open source software.

A few weeks ago in these pages, my industry colleague and former Linux Australia president Pia Smith raised a number of issues which confront the open source space.

Peer production is only the beginning. Today, the best software maintenance is part salesmanship.

Girding himself in asbestos, the author makes a plea to the developers of Linux.

Oracle SA will stage a Linux and Java 'installfest' that will allow developers to install the Oracle JDeveloper development toolset on Linux onto their own PCs at no cost. Oracle's installfest, to be held at the LinuxWorld conference, forms part of its strategy to increase the awareness and use of Novell's SUSE Linux, the Oracle JDeveloper suite and its complementary tools, as well as Oracle's Database 10/g/ Standard Edition 1, for up to two processors.

Many readers commented on last week's report of a study by Evans Data, which said that in a poll of Linux developers, more coders who use Linux prefer to use non-commercial, or pre-packaged distributions of Linux, as opposed to shrink-wrapped Linux distributions from such vendors as Red Hat or SuSE. Of the 419 developers the research firm polled, 34% said they preferred to roll their own Linux, whereas 28% liked commercial Linux better.