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Once upon a time, reviews related to GNU/Linux and free software in open source community publications and Web sites were candy-coated. We were amazed that things actually worked, even if making it work required hacking makefiles and configuration files, compiling from source, and getting your hands dirty in other ways, and gave everything glowing reviews. Today, we expect that everything should work properly the first time, every time, but still, things don't always work out as planned. Yet some readers seem to expect journalists to hide the dirty laundry of poorly designed software and badly supported hardware.

The fuss over the Linux trademark has diverted attention from the real issue - the freedom to change and redistribute software, the founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, Richard M. Stallman, says.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that, according to 2Q05 Worldwide Server Database by Gartner Dataquest, Sun is the number one UNIX platform server vendor in the world, in both revenue and unit shipments. According to Gartner, Sun also reclaimed the number three position in all OS revenue.

For a while it seemed as if the free software community was treading water by improving automatic configuration tools and device support, fighting ridiculous legal issues, and arguing over tools instead of concentrating on its original goal of providing free replacements for proprietary programs. But quietly, in the background, a number of important programs have begun to bring "proprietary functionality" to free software. Here are eight free software desktop applications that could change the balance of power between Windows and GNU/Linux by replacing proprietary software with free code.

Early heads-up. The Fedora team is currently working on an application that can generate a Live-CD for Fedora Core release. Named Kadischi, it currently has basic functionality although it is on early stage.

What is Cell? The Cell Broadband Engine Architecture (CBEA, or, informally, "Cell") defines a new processor structure based upon the 64-bit Power Architecture technology, but with unique features directed toward distributed processing and media-rich applications. This article provides a concise view inside the Cell's architecture.

In the process of finishing the third piece of my Release 1.0 report Open Source Community: How to win friends and influence developers, I spoke with a number of people who asked if I knew of any VP of Marketing types to join their open source company. The truth is I came up pretty much blank. Word on the street is that no less then six open source related companies are looking to fill that role (email me openresource at this domain.com and I will tell you who they are). So why is it so hard to find?

DevelopGo is a special Live CD released by the Onebase Linux Project. As the name indicates, it is meant exclusively for programmers. Although I am a Windows Programmer, I was searching for such a Live CD that would allow me to experiment with different types of toolkits and IDEs available in Linux. DevelopGo matched exactly What I wanted to have with a suite of developer tools and compilers. Read more at distroreviews.com

Distrowatch reports - The third beta of Mandriva Linux 2006 has been released for download and testing: Beta 3 is here! Release notes: 250 bugs fixed since 2006-0.2; 5621 packages rebuilt; fix a bug for configuring mouse; fix some modems firmware loading; enhance GRUB device.map parsing; removed stuff for automatic print queue setup when starting CUPS; Harddrake, use the new way to blacklist modules; packages installation, don't fork anymore to install RPMs during install, use 'nofsync' for RPM database; kernel 2.6.12.5; security hyper-threading enabled by default....

OSDir has some nice screenshots of Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta 3.

Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta 3 was quietly released on Tuesday. No mention of the release is as of yet posted at mandrivalinux.com, but a 3 ISO set and a Mini CD are available for download. I've been following these last 3 betas to see what Mandriva has got up their sleeve for their official Mandriva Linux 2006. The final release was expected to be available on September 15 but it looks to be delayed by at least a week, according to their release schedule which is now a week behind.

Chilean software development firm Linux Center and its Mexican subsidiary Tallard Telecom plan to open five Linux showcase operation centers in the region -- one in Santiago, three in Mexico and one in Venezuela

South African government representatives, big business and open source advocates yesterday concluded a two-day meeting aimed at putting in place a plan for the country's adoption of open source software. But will we see any action?

SIPphone Inc. has released Gizmo Project 1.0 net calling software and signed an agreement to link with the Google Talk instant messaging network in the future.

Microsoft has approached the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), home of Linus Torvalds, to propose working together on a Windows vs Linux analysis. The Redmond giant is hoping to woo the open source organisation into conducting what it calls "independent" and "fact-based" research.

XenSource said Tuesday it accomplished the feat using an Intel processor equipped with VT, or virtualization technology--a feature scheduled to begin shipping in new chips later this year. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is demonstrating the software this week at the Intel Developer Forum here. Xen, which is designed to let multiple operating systems run on the same computer, is almost always is used with Linux. But running Windows as well is useful in the real world, where both operating systems are widely used atop the powerful networked computers called servers.

Announces it will shift its next update of Virtual Server from a maintenance release to a paid upgrade.

Is there a linux friendly online music store? We give a rundown of the options for linux users looking to buy music online.

I like to spend my vacations in places with wide-open vistas, and I love taking pictures of those views. I'm not a professional photographer, and I like the convenience of digital cameras, but sometimes the photo I get is not what I imagined: the area taken by the camera is just too small. Modern digital cameras offer specific functions that in conjunction with their own software can give us a panoramic view, but often that still doesn't give me what I want. When that happens, I can get the effect I want from Hugin, an open source interface to other open source tools that helps easily transform your pictures into panoramas.

Backers in China, South Korea and Japan are ready to go with a regional variation on the open-source operating system.

The open source task team, a collection of government, private and technology experts with an interest in promoting open source, wrapped up its conference in Sandton, Johannesburg, yesterday with a finalised open source action plan which it hopes will be presented to South Africa's government. The document's goal is to affect policy and legislation regarding open source software in the public sector. Spearheaded by Mark Shuttleworth and the Go Open Source campaign, the action plan contains recommendations for both implementing open source software as well as licensing government software and information under open source licences. Skills development and education are also covered.