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The latest version of RHEL 4, still being beta tested, will make use of the 2.6 kernel and will be compatible with the upcoming AMD and Intel dual-core x86 server processors.

There is no reason why you should ever have a computer virus infection, or have to reinstall your computer because it doesn't work properly. You should also be perfectly safe to pay for things over the Internet with your credit card, and use your computer for on-line banking.

Richard Stallman discusses the usual important issues regarding freedom and the GNU/Linux operating system. He no longer "recommends Debian". He also discusses such personal issues as the music he likes, the food he loves and the difficulties in finding a suitable mate.

The Organic Valley farming cooperative had a Web site and email for its member farms, but it desperately needed a corporate-style intranet to facilitate collaboration and better communication. That's where the open source MetaDot project came in, replacing phpWebSite as the sole point of reference for Organic Valley's employees and members. Now that the organization is familiar with open source software, it's finding open source alternatives may be the answer to more software dilemmas.

Neither SCO Group's copyright claims on select Linux code nor Microsoft will be able to slow the spread of Linux in the enterprise over the next two years, an analyst for Gartner Research said.

To say one could see a train wreck coming from hundreds of miles away when the Linux kernel development process switched to using BitKeeper to manage development is to make an understatement of the largest kind. The idea that the best known Free Software kernel would be developed with the aid of a non-Free development tool just seemed peculiar at best and dangerous at worst. OfB's Timothy R. Butler asserts that the moral of this story is one that every business ought to pay attention to.

As my colleague John Fontana wrote in a recent story in Network World (link below), Linux-based messaging systems are catching on. Many users are starting to migrate to Linux-based servers for hosting applications such as e-mail, calendar and collaboration. But another aspect of messaging that is also heating up in Linux land is voicemail and unified messaging.

Towards the end of last year, when I was speculating about what might happen in the area of e-government this year, I said that open source software would start to make a greater impact. I know there are many people who consider open source to be the only way to go forward and that any government not fully committed to it is in some way remiss.

Round Two, a start-up company based in California, launched its website this week and announced that it is working on products and services for use with the Firefox browser. The company was started by former Mozilla marketing head Bart Decrem, who was on board for the Firefox 1.0 release. Round Two is currently developing extensions and enhancements for Firefox, including integrated anti-virus software.

Yesterday we look at three useful Firefox extensions -- small applications that add functionality to Mozilla's Web browser. Here are a few more favorites.

Penguins climb the steps to the Capitol on the cover of last week's Federal Computer Week magazine. Inside, Tom Adelstein, co-author of Exploring the JDS Linux Desktop and regular contributor to Linux Journal magazine, writes about the various open source success stories in the US federal government.

the first Mandriva Linux release is now available! Mandriva Linux Limited Edition 2005 is a transitional release which provides all the best and up to date open source applications to power-users, 32-bit/64-bit trouble-free coexistence, capability to boot from a USB key and many other features, with an excellent stability.

Cluster Resources announced today a new partnership with LinuxHPC.org, an online site that provides news, technical information and a free multi-vendor cluster quoting service.

Stanford law professor and free software advocate, Lawrence Lessig, has called on the open source community to stand up and fight or risk being buried by patent-wielding legacy businesses with arsenals of powerful lawyers.

Microsoft continues to add more material to its 'Get the Facts' Web site to bolster the case for Windows against Linux. The latest addition, which was posted last week, describes a series of tests that were structured to determine which production X86-server environment was easier to set up and run--the one running Windows Server 2003, or the one running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. We'll give you one try to guess who came out on top. (Here's a hint: It wasn't the Linux.)

As many as 98,000 people die each year as a result of preventable medical errors which Free and Open Source electronic medical records software could reduce, according to an article at LinuxMedNews.com. "A contender in this area is the Veterans Administration (VA) public domain VistA codebase and large community," the author writes.

Startup Round Two announces plans to build software and services that make the Firefox browser consumers' control panel for all web activity.

It takes a while to get the hang of mail merges, but OOo 2.0's new Mail Merge Wizard helps make them easier to use.

Neoxen Systems, a European software company developing process management solutions, has today released its process improvement product for Novell platforms. The Neoxen® Modus Lite release 3.1 is specifically targeted at software professionals using Novell Linux Desktop 9, SUSE LINUX Professional and OpenOffice.org 1.1.

Earlier this year, free software and Samba developer Andrew Tridgell was named as the second Open Source Development Labs fellow, sharing the title only with Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Downplaying the moniker and claiming to be more of a "bloke" from Down Under, where he continues to work, Tridgell -- known by many as "Tridge" -- explained that his move from IBM to OSDL was really meant to give him more time to focus on the newest version of Samba4, a FOSS file, and print server for Windows. He talked about the latest version of the software that "opens Windows to a wider world," along with a few other subjects, in a recent email interview with NewsForge.