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What is Firefox? Straight from the horse's mouth: "Firefox is a free, open-source web browser for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X and is based on the Mozilla codebase. It is small, fast and easy to use, and offers many advantages over Internet Explorer, such as the ability to block pop-up windows."

The University of the Western Cape launches GNU/Linux laboratory to raise awareness of free software and increase its use in teaching and learning. Laboratory will be used to showcase the latest free software applications and prove "quality can be built on freedom".

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) is buying $8 million worth of Red Hat's Linux software and services. The deal was awarded through Red Hat reseller DLT Solutions, which has been a Red Hat partner since 2000. The DoC signed a "Blanket Purchase Agreement" (BPA) with Herndon, Va.-based DLT Solutions for Red Hat software and services to be obtained from June 1, 2005, to May 31, 2008, and "is not to exceed $8 million." Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Global File System and Red Hat Network products and services are all part of the deal.

Linux applications are gaining popularity in the retail sector, according to a study released by the Open Source Development Labs on Thursday. In all, Linux deployments in the retail sector were up 34 per cent in 2004 over previous years, according to the study, which was partially based on data from major Linux vendors including IBM, Novell, Red Hat and HP. The popularity of the open source operating system has been part of the reason that costs of POS systems have nosedived in cost, from $4,000 in 2000 to less than $1,000 in 2004, according to the Labs.

The chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center hopes that his organization will act as a spawning ground for top legal talent, both in the U.S. and internationally. Since January, the small team at the center has been juggling running a law practice with building a law firm, according to the center's chairman, Eben Moglen. With the center now established in its New York office, Moglen is looking to take on more clients and hire new staff, and he has high hopes for the center's future.

This is the third in a seven-part series written by FreeNX Development Team member Kurt Pfeifle about his involvement with NX technology. Along the way, he gives some basic insight into the inner workings of NX and FreeNX while outlining its future roadmap.

Novell is to move its SuSE Linux Professional to a community-driven development process with a project called OpenSuse. The move follows the strategy of RedHat's Fedora.

Hundreds of thousands of Linux machines could eventually be used in Indiana schools, if a pilot project goes well.

Thursday's OSCON Open Source Convention covered licensing issues and code awareness, where Linux has a leg up on desktop deployment and where it does not, and the growing opportunity open source brings to developing nations.

It started with the opening of the Quake 2 source code. Then GNU/Linux saw a port for Quake 3 Arena, then Unreal Tournament 2003, UT2004, and Doom 3. We have good first-person shooter (FPS) games for GNU/Linux, but they're all proprietary and restrictively licensed. But Nexuiz is different. It's a free software multiplayer deathmatch game available for 32- and 64-bit GNU/Linux, and 32-bit Windows. It has nothing on Unreal Tournament, but it holds its own against other games and on older hardware that can't be upgraded enough for newer games.

Novell has confirmed rumors that it was about to rebrand and release SUSE Professional as a community project. OpenSUSE will contain "everything you need to get started," says Novell marketing manager Greg Mancusi-Ungaro.

OSDL Members in First Industry Collaboration Among Leading IT Vendors to Share Customer Success Stories on Latest Linux Retail Advances

Novell teams with HP to validate Linux computing stacks and also agrees to offer comprehensive technical support for the JBoss Enterprise Middleware System.

The first time I used it, Slax restored my faith in my old clunker of a Toshiba laptop. The distribution ran (and even booted) faster from the CD-ROM drive than Windows did from the hard disk. But as I began to get a feel for Slax and use it to browse the Web, listen to music, and the like, I didn't feel like Slax had sacrificed usability for agility. This fine balance alone would make Slax an interesting and noteworthy distro, but it has even more tricks up its sleeve.

In addition, Microsoft will address its open-source strategies at the conference, and Google workers will participate in a keynote panel.

Although the size of the code increased over a six-month study, one company said it it found a significant decrease in the number of potentially serious defects in the core Linux kernel.

There may not be fireworks. CIOs and IT directors may not be heaping their proprietary software on bonfires and dancing. Even so, the open source revolution is happening right now and will carry the day, said Bill Weinberg, open source architecture specialist and Linux evangelist for Open Source Development Labs (OSDL). Weinberg will be evangelizing that revolution as a conference speaker at LinuxWorld Conference & Expo San Francisco next week. Before that gig, he discussed the state of the Linux and open source revolution in an interview with SearchEnterpriseLinux.com.

The Debian Common Core Alliance (DCCA), a group that brings together nine different Linux distributions under a common banner, is set to be announced at a press conference at LinuxWorld San Francisco next Tuesday, internetnews.com has learned. The DCCA is expected to help drive Debian into the enterprise and bring it into direct competition with enterprise Linux heavyweights Red Hat and Novell.

Novell is following Red Hat's model of getting others involved in development.

A current Lycoris user (and fomer Mandrake user) reviews the latest version of Mandriva...