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Con Zymaris runs Cybersource, an IT service company in Melbourne, Australia. Cybersource started as a one-man Unix shop in 2001 and has gradually evolved into a decent-sized Linux/FOSS-based business that serves a client base Zymaris says is now 20% government, 20% corporate, and 60% small/medium-sized businesses. (The interview was conducted via IRC and has been lightly edited for spelling, grammar, and continuity.)

What do you expect from a desktop operating system? It should be easy to use, should shield users from technical issues such as hardware configuration, and should be secure and reliable. Knoppix is a LiveCD GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian that meets all those criteria, and it's the distro I use as my regular desktop operating system.

This past weekend saw the first open source software weekend in Uganda. Here, East African Center for Open Source Software chairman Victor van Reijswoud writes about the success of the weekend workshop.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE – Shortly after the private ceremony in which she conferred knighthood on Microsoft founder Bill Gates yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II began “operating sluggishly,” said a Buckingham Palace spokesperson.

The platforms for the candidates for Debian Project Leader for the coming year are now available from http://www.debian.org/vote/2005/vote_001

Remember Jeff Merkey? He's the guy who tried to buy a license to take the Linux kernel proprietary last year, among many other exploits. He has now posted a message, claiming "another Linux patent," pointing to U.S. Patent 6,862,609, granted on March 1 to a certain Jeff Merkey. The patent itself (which appears to cover a scheme for running a RAID array over an FDDI-like network) is not particularly threatening, but it is interesting to note that he has assigned the patent to the Canopy Group. Anybody who wondered who Jeff was working for need wonder no longer. [Need not be a subscriber to see this summary.]

"The Commission might end up paying dearly for its rash collusion with Microsoft" -- "Commission president apparently loves to play high-stakes poker with the EP" -- "Bill Gates is at the moment making himself ever more enemies in the EP"

SCO Group, whose stock is in danger of being de-listed from the Nasdaq Exchange, admitted Thursday that it has made a number of accounting mistakes during the past year -- so many that it announced that it will have to completely restate its numbers for the quarters ending Jan. 31, 2004, April 30, 2004 and July 31, 2004. SCO did say, however, that "the impact of the anticipated corrections does not impact the Company's previously reported net loss or its earnings per share for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2004."

Almost 200 Linux professionals write more than 300 Linux Professional Institute exams - in just one day - squashing the previous record held by Hong Kong.

A great reference for new Linux users who want quick tips for using various command-line features.

Authors slam Sun's open source strategy

The idea is to *compute* our computing liberties as they were the past month time and as they are now. This means that we will review and comment major free software related events happening last month and their impact on our computing freedoms, that is, mainly our software freedoms.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds started a lengthy discussion on the lkml regarding release numbering for the Linux kernel. Some have complained about kernel stability with the new development model discussed back in mid-2004 in which active development occurs in the "stable" 2.6 kernel.

Graphics software giant Adobe Systems has released some components of its commercial products as open-source software, a move intended to help others ease a tedious but important part of programming.

In response to whether or not he had any objections to merging FUSE into the mainline kernel, Andrew Morton offered some insight into what new features were slated for the upcoming 2.6.12 kernel. Andrew began, "I was planning on sending FUSE onto Linus in a week or two," going on to add "that and cpusets are the notable features which are 2.6.12 candidates."

Mandrakesoft today announced an agreement with the French Ministry of Education and Research which allows the distribution of its line of products and services to Higher Education institutions, including universities and research laboratories, throughout France. The agreement also makes it easy for students and workers from these institutions to purchase Mandrakesoft products for their private use. All information is available in the press-release below.

Symbio Technologies, an innovator in server-centric diskless thin client computer systems, said today that it grew its VAR network from a single outpost in Canada to 27 value-added resellers worldwide in 2004.

Linux-based computing grids are becoming the default setup at Penn State University's High Performance Computing department, thanks in part to the Emerging Technologies (ET) group at the college.

Who has the best enterprise operating system? That depends on who you talk to. IBM, Red Hat and Sun are taking the gloves off and maneuvering for x86 desktops.

It's quiet, it's small, it's powerful enough for everyday desktop use and versatile enough to be a set-top media device or small home server. It takes PCMCIA cards, IDE drives, DDR memory, and a standard ATX power supply, yet it's smaller than a laptop computer. It has a built-in DVD decoder (no more DeCSS!) and with its built-in RSA chip it can encrypt and decrypt data faster than the most powerful Athlon 64 system. The question isn't, "What can you do with the Epia MII-12000?" The question is, "What can't you do with the Epia MII-12000?"