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Windows and Linux are neck-and-neck when it comes to the cost of maintenance. Analyst Yankee Group questioned 509 companies and organisations of all sizes in North America about the total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI) of the two systems, and found that more than half of those surveyed planned to install Linux in parallel with, or in addition to existing Windows systems.

VA Linux Systems Japan K.K. (VA Linux), a leading provider of Linux solutions for the telecommunications and enterprise systems markets, today announced that it is ready to offer a brand-new professional service called 'VA Quest', a Failure Analysis Solution Service for the Linux Kernel, which makes full use of the power of VA Linux's Linux kernel experts.

A Hurd live CD has recently seen the light for everybody who would like to give it a try without installing the system. Noèl Köthe reported during the CeBIT exhibition that some German government agencies have switched to Debian recently. Kenshi Muto has recorded an installation of Debian sarge which can be watched by using telnet.

Sun announces the five members of its OpenSolaris Community Advisory Board, which includes open-source luminary Roy Fielding.

Welcome to the Mandrakelinux Community Newsletter -- dedicated to keeping you up-to-date with the latest Mandrakelinux-related news & info.

The Linux Professional Institute announced today the addition of its most recent "Platinum Sponsor": Linux Journal

Although KOffice may not yet be at the level of functionality of OpenOffice, it is still a pretty powerful office suite albeit with relatively little coverage. This is the first of my series of easy How-To's for KOffice that hopefully anyone can follow. The first How-To, including screenshots, shows you how you can easily make use of the mail merge feature in your KWord documents.

Some businesses haven't jumped on the Firefox bandwagon because they think the Mozilla Foundation's browser is just for home users. But they're missing a ride to safer and more secure browsing, according to John Hedtke, co-author of Firefox & Thunderbird Garage, which is being released by Prentice Hall PTR in mid-April. Hedtke recently spoke to SearchEnterpriseLinux.com about why he feels that Firefox fits the business mold. He also described new Firefox extensions like MouseGestures and explained why those considering a transition might not want to dump Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) just yet. Here are some excerpts from that conversation:

The UK government is funding several projects to accelerate the adoption of open source software in the public sector, including a Sourceforge for councils.

The company expands its coverage to include unlimited protection for defense, repair and replacements involving any intellectual property claims.

Alexis Boulva writes "Tonight, Ole André Vadla Ravnås of the Farsight project (LGPL), which 'is an audio/video conferencing framework specifically designed for Instant Messengers' for the GNU Linux operating system, finished coding a release candidate of libmimic, 'an open source video encoding/decoding library for Mimic V2.x-encoded content (fourCC: ML20), which is the encoding used by MSN Messenger for webcam conversations.'

New maintenance updates for Mozilla Firefox and the Mozilla Application Suite are on the way. Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 and Mozilla 1.7.7 will include critical security and stability fixes but no new features. Windows Firefox users will be relieved to hear that Firefox 1.0.3 will fix the bug that causes multiple Firefox entries to appear in the Add or Remove Programs window.

Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, is an outreach of the American Baptist Association (ABA) to Native Americans, and is Oklahoma's oldest center for higher education, established in 1880. The small, four-year liberal arts school doesn't receive any form of government funding, so finding economical ways to provide the best education possible is a priority for the staff. Recently, Bacone's technologist Robert Duncan III, transferred a Linux hobby into huge savings for the school's IT department.

Georg Grev, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, has written to Rudy Provoost, president of the European Information& Communications Technology Industry Association, to explain why software patents are a bad idea. Quoting Bill Gates own observations about the nature of software patents, and presenting an interesting hypothetical about the the state of science today if Pythagoras had developed his theorem under a system where ideas are patented, Grev shreds the duplicitous claims of those who back the legalization of monopoly power to seize and steal ideas through the device of software patents. NewsForge presents the following text including Grev's letter as a public service for our readers.

There's a growing trend for traditionally Windows-centric software companies to release Linux versions of their products. Nero AG recently decided to jump on the bandwagon by releasing a Linux port of their very popular CD burning software. In this review I'll take a look at what it offers and how it compares to K3b, an established Linux CD writing application.

The company is also expected to launch its ISV and open-source developer programs, which include an ISV testing and certification service.

IBM has quietly been using a form of open-source development internally to create technology the company will sell commercially.

After dealing with a change in leadership, the OSI has, as promised, expanded its board, and some board members say they are planning to cut back on the number of open-source licenses.

The following information has been provided by the product vendor and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Linux Journal.

Yet another month has passed, full of events, screaming thoughts and voices, virtual fights, victories and defeats. But the "war" is still raging. And this column is on the "computing liberty front", with small people like you and me...