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Recently we had the chance to test out Red Hat's new version of its popular Enterprise Linux product, which Red Hat is officially unveiling today. The results were somewhat disappointing, as RHEL4 offers few compelling reasons for current RHEL3 customers to upgrade. For those considering new deployments, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 will be a more attractive option than its predecessor, but how will it fare against rival products from Novell, Sun Microsystems, and Mandrakesoft?

A lot of good advice for novice administrators, plus a few tips and tricks for more advanced users.

Novell and HP are donating more software code to the open-source community, while IBM is beefing up solutions to get more users on Linux.

Finding a wireless PC Card network adapter that works with GNU/Linux can be frustrating, and involves three possible results: you find a card that works natively; you find a card that will only work through NdisWrapper; or you find a card that just doesn't work, but might eventually, you hope. The second approach involves using proprietary binary drivers, which disagrees with some distribution philosophies (as well as that of OpenBSD). If at all possible, you want to find a PC Card adapter that has an open source driver and works perfectly with GNU/Linux. Netgate has made that possible with its 2511 CD Plus EXT2 wireless LAN card.

Let's start off with some questions that may have answers that are harder than you would expect:

1. "In general, how do you react to outsiders that offer to present at your Linux User Group (LUG)?"
2. "What about commercial interests presenting to your LUG?"
3. "What would you do if a Microsoft employee showed up at your LUG?"
4. "If you allowed a Microsoft employee to present, just what kind of topics would you allow?

Now for the really tricky part: The questions, especially that last one, aren't hypothetical.

The snowballing success of Linux has attracted involvement from all corners of the computing realm--but the breadth of that interest is expected to complicate a revision of the software's legal underpinnings.

Invites Participation in Defining Requirements for Linux on the Enterprise Desktop

At LinuxWorld, Sun is previewing its StarOffice 8 beta, with better interoperability with Microsoft Office, and Release 3 of its Java Desktop System, featuring expanded device support.

- Novell Security Manager powered by Astaro delivers complete gateway security that protects businesses against security threats caused by hackers, viruses, worms, spam and intrusions

"The open source community is the ultimate marketing focus group," says entrepreneur Stephen Street, whose latest venture, StreetFire Sound Labs, is taking on traditional stereo equipment manufacturers in the "living room war" over home media equipment. StreetFire's first product, the fully open source RBX1600 personal music server, debuted in the fourth quarter of 2004. The big difference between StreetFire's $750 server and proprietary systems: "We want people to hack our box," says Street. "You know the people hacking their Tivos and running Linux on their Xboxes? We love those guys!"

Desktop Linux Summit 2005 proves to be a success

"Klax" is an i486 GNU/Linux Live-CD based on Slackware 10.1 with a patched Qt 3.3.4 and a complete KDE 3.4 Beta 2. Additionally it also contains KOffice 1.3.5 and k3b 0.11.20. All this within an ISO image of only 373MB. It can be used to give you an impression of the upcoming KDE 3.4, to verify if bugs still exist or discover new ones and to make screenshots.

IBM releases XL C/C++ ( a high-performance optimizing compiler ) to Linux developers.

We are one week into the nomination period for candidates for the position of the Debian Project Leader.

Three Los Angeles council members want the city to switch to an open-source platform to save millions of dollars in software costs. Council members Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greul and Jack Weiss introduced a motion yesterday asking the city's Information Technology Agency about a transition from proprietary software licenses to open-source platforms and programs. The money saved could be used to hire more police personnel, the council members said.

A Framingham technology show producer will bring its LinuxWorld exposition to Boston this week for the first time ever, recognizing the growth of the thriving open-source software industry in Massachusetts and MetroWest.

Talk about dedication! In preparation for "Microsoft and Linux square off in InfoWorld's Exchange migration challenge" -- a shootout pitting Microsoft Exchange against four commercial Linux-based mail servers -- Test Center Senior Editor Ted Samson took a vacation … to Antarctica.

Greg Papadopoulos says Sun's Common Development and Distribution License is "more liberal in its IP license than even the GPL, because it gives a clear patent license and doesn't demand the same viral propagation."

Opportunities widen in enterprise market.

One reader questioned my statement a couple of weeks ago that "every service and utility that ships in the [Open Enterrprise Server] package will run on either" the NetWare or Linux kernel. He specifically mention iFolder, reminding me that a new version was being built using the Mono framework, usually associated with open-source-on-Linux projects. He's right, but so was I.