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Move along, nothing to see here. Some Firefox preferences are just too technical for end users. Oh, you're a Linux Journal reader? Come on in.

The government shouldn't regulate software development through patent enforcement, Lawrence Lessig says.

Who says open source can't measure up to commercial software for mission-critical applications? Far from being a mere quick fix or low-cost alternative, open source software is helping real-world companies solve their most pressing IT problems. Perhaps no more dramatic example exists than pioneering social networking site Friendster. When Friendster launched in March 2003, no one imagined that within two years the site would reach 60 million page views per day. Unfortunately, as the site's traffic increased, so did its performance issues. The problem, in essence, was that Friendster had unexpectedly become a phenomenon.

Computer Associates is talking to fellow software vendors including Sun Microsystems and IBM about creating a common commercial open source licence for future projects.

The software vendor will add to the 20 products it now offers for source-code inspection under its Shared Source Initiative.

"One country . . . one ideology, one system is not sufficient. It is helpful to have a variety of different approaches . . . We can then make a joint effort to solve the problems of the whole of humankind." Dalai Lama Open source and Linux is currently at the forefront of the new OSI Licensing Process and the GPL version 3. This usually would boil down to nothing for me and most likely boils down to nothing for most end users. However, in the cases of both of these 'improvements,' there are alternative motives. Don't fool yourself into believing that all intentions of the OSI is to make Joe Common and his laptop full of Linux happy. While they may have Joe's best interests in mind...they have his pot on the backburner while the new Teflon coated enterprise pot is heating up nicely on the front one.

You may be familiar with Blender 3D, the open source modeling, animation, rendering, and post-production package from the Blender Foundation. If you have used Blender for longer than a few weeks and miss some aspects of the old pre-2.3 user interface, or if you are looking for some interesting features to improve your 3D experience, you should get to know instinctive-blender, a fork created by the small German company instinctive mediaworks.

"The Linux desktop has come a long way," says O'Reilly publishing in its promotional announcement of Linux Desktop Hacks, a new book by Nicholas Petreley and Jono Bacon. "Flocks of would-be users who were put off by its early lack of polish or aesthetic flaws are now revisiting Linux and finding an operating system and applications that give Windows a run for its money," adds O'Reilly.

Linux doesn't stand still, whether it's the kernel or GNU/Linux distributions. If you're a developer or a hobbyist who likes to stay up to date, you can't stand still, either. Upgrading isn't always easy, though. Kevin Farnham recently switched distributions several times; here are some hard-earned lessons from the process.

Accused of incorporating code from PearPC and two other open-source projects, Maui X-Stream has decided to make its Mac emulator open source.

The Array is pleased to announce the second release of Ubuntu!

The Kubuntu team is proud to bring you our first release hot on the heels of Ubuntu's Hoary Hedgehog.

Ubuntu 5.04 (The Hoary Hedgehog Release) IS OUT! Download here. Ubuntu 5.04 Screenshots. At the same time, the Kubuntu team is proud to bring you their first release hot on the heels of Ubuntu's Hoary Hedgehog. Download Kubuntu. Kubuntu 5.04 Screenshots.

A review of one of the world's biggest tech gatherings.

I have been using Linux since Red Hat 7.x back in 2000. I have tried Lycoris, Debian, Knoppix, Ubuntu, Mandrake, SUSE, and other distributions, but I've always found myself coming back to Red Hat. When Red Hat stopped development of its free operating system, I was disappointed, but I ended up liking the Fedora Core series, including the latest FC3, even better. Why do I like it so much?

Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig has claimed that Microsoft is preparing "an all-out war" on the open source community, specifically Linux. The controversial proclaimer on copyright issues and member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation made his claim at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.

Open-source apps could better meet the needs of small and midsize businesses, software exec says.

Linux has been gaining ground on Microsoft for some time now in various market segments, but up until recently nobody really broke down the figures to see where Linux was making the most progress. Most everyone assumed Linux was making inroads into small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) due to its up-front pricing advantages over Microsoft. Analysts also assumed big businesses were only tentatively using Linux due to corporate stodginess.

Computer-based automotive crash simulations haven't made significant headlines since the 1990s, when vendors like Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. were providing workstation-based simulation software to automotive players like Audi and BMW. With that information in hand, many authorities in the automotive circuit may have been scratching their heads this week about the relevance of an IBM announcement that had the Volvo Car Corp. purchasing a high-performance computing (HPC) platform to conduct automobile crash simulations.

You might think that Compiere Inc. is the new kid on the enterprise resource planning (ERP) block. But large businesses like early adopter Goodyear Dunlop Tires Germany have been using the open source program since 2000. Compiere co-creator Jorg Janke said most of his company's business users hail from outside the U.S., though that is beginning to change. Janke talked to SearchEnterpriseLinux.com about his company's product at the Open Source Business Conference. Here are some excerpts from that conversation