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Tonight's headlines are:

• A Quick Recap of Some of the Best April Fool's Jokes from this Past Week
• A Brief history of the K Desktop Environment
• An Interview With Aaron Seigo about The Appeal Project
• A book review of Rebel Code

Tonight is really a phenomenally great episode thanks to Aaron. Please take the time to hear about his exciting new project.

listen/stream

The Yankee Group, which has done much to play down the upswing in Linux, has decided that the running operating system IS about the same cost as Windows. For ages, the Spinsters of Microsoft have been waiving about a Yankee report, which says that Windows is cheaper than Linux. The report, penned by Laura DiDio, has been damned by Linux advocates who dubbed Yankee Microsoft’s lackeys and basing its evidence on dubious evidence.

Open source champion Larry Augustin has pointed start-ups towards opportunities in the lucrative small and medium business (SMB) market, saying the system of delivering enterprise software is "broken".

Last month's newsletter which looked at the NeroLinux CD burning utility for Linux prompted much interest and suggestions for other Linux-focused CD tools. So this week we'll take a look at some alternatives for making data storage and playable music CDs on a Linux machine. Since many readers mentioned free tools such as mkisofs and cdrecord for burning CDs on a Linux box, I'll throw in CDRBQ. As the project's creators say, "Why just toast, when you can BBQ?" This program is a graphical front end for burning CDs with basic Linux CD burning utilities such as mkisofs and cdrecord, as well as cdrdao and cdparanoia. The tool can also be used to run scripts that automate tasks done in the respective CD utilities.

Sun's CEO defends its choice of the CDDL for the OpenSolaris project and promises more open-source innovation to come.

I am a small business owner, and like many self-employed Linux enthusiasts, I am constantly drawn to open source solutions to small business issues. Two months ago I migrated all of my office paperwork over to PDF format designed with the open source Scribus, and I haven't looked back. It's universally readable, there is no sacrifice on quality, and as a bonus I get to do my work in Linux.

Microsoft is expanding its anti-Linux "Get the Facts" campaign by targeting the issue of reliability, a company executive said at the on Tuesday, the day the Open Source Business Conference kicked off in San Francisco.

The Steffen Group is a family owned and operated business that provides accounting services, technology consultation, and graphic design. With this eclectic mix of offerings, the family discovered the operating system that works best for them is based on Linux. They were so convinced, in fact, that they dropped all the other product lines in the consultation arm of the firm and now focus solely on providing their customers with the same Linux technology that has worked wonders for their own business.

Opinion:Along with one of Microsoft's favorite research firms, companies that use both Linux and Windows are finding that Windows has no cost advantage over Linux. Are we surprised? I think not!

Microsoft's efforts to improve the security of Windows have paid off, leading to significant improvements in patch management and other areas, according to executives from North American companies surveyed by Yankee Group.

Open-source vendors of enterprise application software will have competitive advantages over established proprietary license vendors, especially in the SMB field, says Larry Augustin, CEO of Medsphere Systems, during the Open Source Business Conference.

A vocal group has long protested Linus' use of BitKeeper, considering Linux the free and open source flagship product. GNU Project founder Richard Stallman is among the protestors, harshly criticizing Linus' decision to use a non-free (as in freedom) tool. However, most acknowledge that no free tool currently exists that is as powerful as BitKeeper, offering the ability to perform truly distributed development. Attempts to reverse engineer some of BitKeeper's features have lead to repeated cautions by BitMover. Most recently two such reverse engineering attempts have contributed to BitMover's decision to end the development and availability of the free BitKeeper product.

The latest issue of Linux Gazette is ready for viewing and download at http://linuxgazette.net/

Desktop Linux Making Inroads on Campaign for Wider Retail Distribution

The final article in this series described the implementation of a VPN server to enable encrypted Wi-Fi transmissions.

About three years ago, the team behind the open source window manager Enlightenment (E) began rewriting the software from the ground up. Although E was being maintained, receiving the minor updates necessary to keep it from obsolescence, the team has been conscienciously working on the new development release (DR) 17. Despite the popularity of the current version (DR16), the prolonged development cycle necessary for the new one has led anxious fans to largely forget about it. But lead developer Carsten Haitzler (Rasterman) assures us that the project is not stagnant, just moving slower than other, better-known window manager development projects.

Open-source operating systems will not spread unless users have applications to run on them. As Linux matures and customers more seriously consider adopting it and its cousins, developers are constructing programs that increase the operating system's appeal.

Users of Portland Group PGI(R) Compilers Invited to Upgrade to the Higher Performance of the PathScale EKOPath(TM) Compiler Suite for FORTRAN, C and C++ PathScale's Award-Winning Compilers Are Well-Known as the World's Fastest 64-Bit x86 Compilers for Linux(R)

With IDS v10, IBM has optimized native 64-bit editions for all major Linux platforms.

Apache recently held a week-end “infrathon” to sweep the dust out of the corners, squash a few old bugs, drink a wee bit of ale (and maybe a wee bit more than a wee bit) and get their hands dirty with the Zen of maintaining their infrastructure. MadPenguin.org crashed the party in search of the secrets of getting into the “zone” while peeking into the grittiest of the nitty gritty of one of the darling projects of open source, Apache.