Showing all newswire headlines

SAN FRANCISCO - 10 Aug 2005 - The second day of LinuxWorld passed without any fistfights breaking out between vendors, although there are rumors of rancor between Sun and IBM over a modification of OpenOffice.org that IBM is passing out on CDs. There are more hardware vendors than last year, with bigger and splashier displays. And in honor of the late, great San Francisco newspaper columnist Herb Caen, I will end this paragaph and some other ones with three dots...

These guys have been talking to each other. Over the last two weeks, there has been a rash of announcements from a number of leading vendors pledging support for new open virtualisation standards. The plans pointedly do not involve Microsoft and could be seen as encircling the Redmond giant in the booming virtualisation market, which most observers see as becoming of growing importance over the next few years. Both Intel and AMD will build virtualisation hooks into their upcoming products, for example.

Many secondary schools students in the French region of Auvergne will receive CDs containing free and open source software when they return to school in September. The project, which has been funded by the local government, will see 64,000 packs of CDs distributed to school pupils, according to Linux Arverne, a Linux user group involved in the initiative.

Nomad Press is a small, "fiercely independent" book publishing company based in Colorado. It's run by Deborah Robson, a writer, editor, knitter, and now, a Linux user.

Two Linux allies are taking a leaf out of their opponents' book as they try to prevent software patents from dragging open source into a mire of patent-infringement lawsuits. Red Hat will finance outside programmers' efforts to obtain patents that may be used freely by open source developers, the top Linux seller said on Tuesday at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo.

Would it bother you if the only browser you could use to preregister a copyright claim with the United States Copyright Office is Internet Explorer, version 5.1 and higher? Well, you might be getting bothered real soon, because that is what the Library of Congress has in mind.

Distrowatch reports - Currently, SUSE Linux 10.0 Beta 1 (code name: Prague) is an unsupported, open source only, preliminary edition of SUSE Linux that contains bleeding-edge packages and represents the latest development snapshot. If you intend to test for bugs or contribute patches, this version is for you... OSDir has some

This week's tech conference in San Francisco still went by the name LinuxWorld. But the Linux operating system was only a part of what went on there. Attendees pitched databases, software to manage customer data, security add-on programs and scores of other products — some of it compatible with Linux's rival, Microsoft Windows. Rather than zero in on Linux, the conference has broadened its focus to include all open-source software — code that's developed and shared freely. Though Linux is still the poster child of open-source programming, it's far from alone.

Central Scotland Police, which pioneered the use of open source, including Linux desktops, has begun implementing a major Microsoft-based IT overhaul. The force is to replace much of its open source infrastructure, which was introduced from 2000, with Microsoft technology, including Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Microsoft Office

There has been a great deal of buzz lately about KDE4 and especially Plasma. Many other people are asking where they can see what new features are being developed at the moment, and other signs of progress. These people have been a little disappointed to hear that while a lot of hard work has been happening on KDE4 development, almost no progress has been made that's clear to the casual observer. So what really is happening? To understand that, we need to take a look at Q

IBM has told Linux developers the desktop is the next frontier, but they must avoid employing the same tactics used against Unix on servers to conquer it. Steve Mills, IBM's senior vice president and group executive, told Linux developers they need a new value proposition on the desktop. One option is the "managed desktop", something that - unsurprisingly - looks a lot like IBM's Workplace.

Matt Hagedorn, an IT consultant with Matrix Computer Solutions, of Sausalito, Calif., came mainly to look at Linux systems and applications that would be well-suited for small business environments. Hagedorn said he was particularly impressed with Scalix Corp.'s Linux e-mail server. "I liked how everything just runs on the central server and you don't have to worry about Outlook clients or whatever you have running," Hagedorn said.

Xandros Business Edition provides a desktop environment that looks and feels much like a better-looking Windows 2000. Unlike Windows, Xandros is easy to install and maintain, and it doesn't come with all of the security flaws and virus vulnerabilities that Windows has. As an added bonus, Xandros Business Edition includes the full edition of CrossOver Office 4.2 (other editions of Xandros include only a 30-day trial). That means that if there is a major Windows software package that you can't live without, chances are you will be able to install and run it on Xandros through CrossOver. In short, Xandros is now ready to eliminate Windows from corporate desktop computers.

When IBM considers the future of its $15 billion-per-year software business, the proliferation of open-source software and Java-based applications is crucial to kick-starting the division's relatively flat sales and keeping it competitive with Microsoft. IBM climbed aboard the Linux movement early, but over the past few years the company's open-source efforts have extended well beyond the operating system. IBM has made a habit of contributing code to open-source projects, hoping others will create new software that IBM can sell and provide services for, or that at the very least will encourage the growth of Java-based development to block Microsoft's .Net ambitions.

I am happy to report that Nuxified.com has just been officially launched. It is a new web site for all existing and aspiring GNU/Linux users to share stories about experiences from migration to usage of a GNU/Linux operating system as well as "show off" stories of your current GNU/Linux setup and customizations you may have made to it.

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has unveiled a Patent Commons Project that will help developers to avoid infringing patents. The not-for-profit organisation, which aims to further the adoption of Linux, employs several open source developers including Linux creator Linus Torvalds.OSDL chief executive Stuart Cohen said at the LinuxWorld tradeshow in San Francisco that the project will build a library of patents that have been pledged to support open source.

AUGUST 10, 2005 (INFOWORLD) - The open source community can't provide a drop-in replacement for expensive, high-end CRM applications from the likes of Salesforce.com or Siebel just yet. Still, you might be surprised at the level of sophistication some of the available projects already offer, particularly for midsize organizations. SugarCRM, for example, offers a complete, enterprise-class CRM system built on open-source technologies, including PHP, MySQL, and the Apache Web server.

O'Reilly Media, Inc. is rolling out a new syndication mechanism that provides greater control over the content we publish online. You'll notice some improvements immediately, such as better standards compliance, graphical tiles accompanying article descriptions, and enclosure support for podcatching applications. We've tested the new feeds using a variety of popular newsreaders and aggregators, but we realize that there may be a few bumps along the way.

BM is shipping its Workplace Services suite of applications with the Red Hat Linux operating system. Companies are being offered both systems for 90-day trial periods. IBM wants large corporate and public-sector IT users to use its software when they switch to Linux. Red Hat is the largest Linux supplier. Small and medium-sized businesses or individual departments in larger organisations will be able to test IBM Workplace Services on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system.

We at GameSHOUT have noticed more and more Firefox browser users during the past 30 days than previous. Firefox held steady at only 3.2% during 2004 up until the month of December where it finished out the year at 10.2%. So far it has jumped to 17.4% for the month of January 2005. That's a large jump and enough for us to notice it. Some may say that 17.4% isn't much to speak about when comparing to Microsoft's Internet Explorer which is ranked 74.8% overall. However, we think it is. We recently installed Firefox support for our GameSHOUT Internet Radio stream so that Firefox users don't have to use IE. If this trend continues, we could see Firefox support going from 17.4% to 25-30% by the month of February. Remember, these are only GameSHOUT statistics which only report on what browser our visitors are using. Each site can vary in these statistics.