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The EU Council will postpone its decision on making software patentable until 2005, a sign of mounting political pressure against the decision, which could now be pushed back to next March.

The following text was forwarded to us by Bruce Perens as "An open letter from PalmSource to the Linux community." It is reproduced here verbatim aside from minor HTML formatting changes:

The Mozilla Firefox browser has garnered wide attention for its capabilities, compared to its predecessor Mozilla and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. But in addition to its widely covered speed enhancements and robust security, Firefox offers a rich assortment of features that are not so evident upon installation.

The blank document that opens every time you open the OpenOffice Writer application is actually a template. A real-world situation in the story below illustrates the need of some users to open a blank document with unusual or non-standard characteristics. It's a non-intuitive adjustment and offers a launch pad for a demonstration of OpenOffice's rich Templates features. (Applicable to OpenOffice 1.1.3 on Windows, GNU/Linux and Mac OS X.)

Red Hat needs to lower its prices, or risk losing customers to free versions of the open-source operating system, the Dell executive who oversees the partnership with the Linux seller said Tuesday.

Top Dell executives disparaged the "big iron" approach of building large, powerful servers on Tuesday--a dig at rivals IBM, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard.

Dell and Sun Microsystems actually agree on something. Both companies think Red Hat's Linux operating system and services are too expensive. A Dell executive struck out at Red Hat today, saying smaller customers might shy away from the price of Red Hat's software. This charge is particularly unusual for Dell, which has been a major Red Hat backer. Dell, in fact, has been a longtime investor in Red Hat and was late to promote SuSE Linux as an option for customers.

My family and I were glued to the local TV weather reports as Hurricane Charley made its way up the Florida peninsula past our Orlando home last August. I was impressed with the FasTrac Millennium and Vipir radar systems the WKMG forecasters were using and resolved that I'd find out about them after the bad weather had passed. Surely there was a Linux box or two in there somewhere, I thought, and I was right; Millennium and Vipir don't run on Linux, but an innovative application called GestureStorm does.

Well, the rumors first published by the New York Times a few days ago turned out to be true. IBM said late Tuesday that it has agreed to sell its personal computer division to China-based Lenovo and accept a minority stake in its former rival valued at $1.75 billion.

Want a quick and easy introduction to Linux? Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols offers two reading suggestions that will help get you started.

Thunderbird 1.0 is officially out and we've got the goods! Head over to OSDir.com to have a look at this much anticipated release in our Thunderbird 1.0 Screenshot tour. Thunderbird 1.0 is an open source application not only for Linux but Mac and Windows users as well. We're mixing it up a bit by showing this application running on Windows XP.

This whitepaper from TimeSys discusses Carrier Grade Linux (CGL), and changes in the CGL 2.0 requirements document released last fall. It also discusses CGL 2.0's self-registration process for vendor compliance, which TimeSys completed first, among CGL vendors. Enjoy . . . !

BEA Systems said it will release a test version of its latest WebLogic Server software later this month, and the company also detailed product delivery plans for next year.

Welcome to this year's 48th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Frank Ronneburg has updated his book about Debian to cover the upcoming release of sarge and will present it on December 14th in Berlin, Germany. Europcar has switched 1,500 computers in branch offices to Debian based thin clients, and is now moving 3,500 more machines in headquarters to GNU/Linux.

A new set of offerings formed with the expansion of the IBM Virtualization Innovation Center for Hardware has a distinct Linux flavor, including an online "how to" guide for porting from Windows, Unix or Linux to Linux on Power5.

The first open-source integrated development environment (IDE) from Texas Instruments is aimed at its MSP430 family of low power microcontrollers. Based on the Eclipse open source platform...

This guest editorial by Linux consultant Binh Nguyen is an exercise in "tough love." Nguyen points out key design attributes of Debian that make it one of the strongest and most versatile Linux offerings available. At the same time, he notes several important areas where Debian falls flat. Yet, with a few simple improvements and a more welcoming attitude to new users, Nguyen argues, Debian could turn into the most popular Linux distro around.

Most Linux computer servers used in the enterprise are running on dual processors, reflecting a transition in the marketplace for the open-source operating system toward heavier enterprise workloads, a research firm said Monday.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4.0 will now support Bangla. Scheduled for release in February 2005, the beta version was demonstrated today at the Infocom 2004, in Kolkata.

A public meeting on software patents is to be held next week, but various high-profile anti-patent campaigners seem to have fallen off the guest list