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The server that handles theLinux Kernel Mailing List [archive] recently got an upgrade. Matti Aarnio explains, "folks at Dell have donated a new machine to be VGER, and folks at RedHat have installed it into [a] co-location facility with [a] 1000Mbps network connection into the machine." The upgrade offers much more performance for handling the extremely high-traffic mailing list.

The Linux Kernel Mailing List is usually referred to as the lkml. It evolved many years ago from the "Linux Activist" and otherearly Linux mailing lists run in Finland. Eventually the early mailing lists were replaced by theMajordomo powered lkml, managed by David Miller at Rutgers University on a server called "vger". When David went to work at RedHat, the server and mailing list went with him. To this day, it continues to be housed at RedHat. Even though it has a kernel.org domain name, it is not actually part of the Linux Kernel Archives [story] or their infrastructure. Instead, it's included in the kernel.org domain due to its function as the primary Linux development mailing list.

With more and more African governments and policy makers looking at free and open source software as a viable alternative to proprietary software, Bridges.org today released a research report that looks at the current stat of FOSS usage on the continent and offers some suggestions on how decision makers can evaluate the benefits and pitfalls of switching to free software.

SAN FRANCISCO - 09 Aug 2005 - This is the 10th or 11th LinuxWorld Expo I've attended. Or is it the 12th? Anyway, I've been to all the U.S. ones and they're starting to blur together. Two seconds after I came through the door I ran into Mae Ling Mak and Clay Claiborne of Los Angeles-based Cosmos Engineering, two old friends from LinuxWorlds past, and we tried to estimate the percentage of people who were here because they were committed GNU/Linux advocates vs. the percentage who were here because they were paid to be here as part of their jobs. We figured at least 85% of all attendees were here for their jobs.

While Linux and open-source software keep making progress in the server market, could this be its time to break through in the wider enterprise? eWEEK.com looks at the state of the market from the floor of LinuxWorld San Francisco, August 2005 .

When you install a new Linux server distribution, you can often install all of the daemons you'll need to run on that machine at install time. Distribution vendors present a "ready to go" distribution by supplying initialization scripts for all of the services you might run. But what happens if you're building from source, and no init script is supplied? What if you're writing the source and haven't ever built an init script? Here are a few ways to cope when you're faced with this challenge.

Since Knoppix burst dramatically into the Linux scene there has been an explosion of Debian-based distributions. This is welcome news to us lonely souls who have long been preaching that Red Hat is not Linux. Linux covers a far wider spectrum, as a quick peek at DistroWatch demonstrates. You'll find everything from tiny specialized Linuxes that fit on embedded devices, USB keys, floppy diskettes, or miniature CDs, to full-blown "kitchen sink" distributions that fill a DVD. Red Hat deserves a substantial amount of credit for supporting Linux development, popularizing Linux, and spawning a host of other Linux distributions. Just don't think that Red Hat is all there is to the Linux world.

In Part 4, Kurt explains how NX interoperates with Windows Terminal Services and VNC remote setups. Much of what Kurt describes in this series can be reproduced and verified with one or two recent Knoppix CDs, version 3.6 or later

Red Hat, in an effort to expand its patching service's utility, is adding monitoring and cross-platform support to aid customers migrating to RHEL.

Red Hat has unveiled an initiative dubbed 'Security in a Networked World' at the LinuxWorld tradeshow in San Francisco. As part of the programme, the Linux vendor showcased its Red Hat Certificate System that allows organisations to manage security certificates used to sign emails, or authenticate users for online banking applications. It also supports authentication through the use of smartcards. Red Hat has been working with the Apache Foundation to add support for the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client through the use of Apache's open source Network Security Service Libraries. The collaboration will allow users of both systems to send and receive authenticated emails with Thunderbird, while organisations including online banks and web stores can use the system to authenticate users through smartcards in combination with Firefox.

Release should lead to debate of near-religious fervor over future of license that governs much free and open-source software.

LinuxWorld is in town and I haven't seen this much activity around a trade show in years. Actually, if you think about it, this is not surprising because it is becoming such a bedrock foundation of today's enterprise software world. Linux, as the spearhead for the open source movement, has also become the metaphor for how to succeed in today's IT world. The metaphor is: take advantage of community property and layer your secret/proprietary sauce on top.

New Version Provides Simplified, General Purpose Cluster File Management at No Cost

Chipmaker releases a simulator designed to prod development of software for upcoming processor features.

The latest 64-bit offerings from Intel and AMD are compelling and reasonably priced. 64-bit technology may soon dominate the desktop, but is it ready for the laptop market? A quality mobile computer needs to balance performance and power consumption in a way that will maximize user productivity and mobility. Are mobile 64-bit processors up to the task? I decided to review an AMD Athlon 64-bit laptop in order to find out

Company will collaborate with universities to move its high-end but rarely used product line closer to the mainstream.

Everyday, employees produce a boatload of documents in their everyday work, which are stored on various content backends. WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition provides extensive capabilities to search for the needle in the haystack of business information from a single point of access, within sub-second response time, while scaling to millions of documents and thousands of users. This article describes the key concepts involved, outlines a workflow for designing and implementing semantic search solutions.

Previously supporting only Mozilla and Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Big Blue's Workplace desktop software now also supports the Firefox browser.

MontaVista Software Inc. and PalmSource Inc. have joined each others' partner programs and are teaming up to "help further accelerate the development of next generation Linux-based mobile phones," the companies announced today. They plan to "leverage their collective expertise to create integrated solutions for handset vendors and mobile operators looking to build Linux handsets

ObjectWeb, an international nonprofit consortium of companies and research organizations who have joined forces to produce next-generation open source middleware, today announced that ObjectWeb is the only nonprofit organization to be evaluated in two reports published by Gartner (http://www.gartner.com).

Excerpts from the Deposition of SCO employee Erik W. Hughes [PDF]. Hold on to your hats. He confirms that the Linux Kernel Personality did indeed include Linux kernel code, and as a result, both UnixWare 7.1.2 and 7.1.3 included Linux kernel code until May of 2003

Q: So until May of last year, Unix -- those two UnixWare 7 releases included the Linux kernel?

A: That's correct.