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The challenges in front of Novell's partner community include skills development and the ability to recognize and exploit new opportunities, as well as the need to understand the culture that the Linux community is bringing to the enterprise environment space.

Mandrake 10 has it, SUSE's rolling it out in 9.1, Gentoo has had a "test" version with it since last year, and now we'll probably see almost every commercial distribution move to 2.6.x within the next month or two because of competitive pressure. This is not in line with the basic "it's ready when it's ready" dictum that is given as the reason open source software is often technically superior to proprietary competitors.

In this interview we learn how the System Configuration Collector (SCC) project began, how the software works, why Siem chose to make it open source, and information on future developments.

Parts 1 – 6 of this series describe a service domain that represents a collection of comparable or related Web services through a common services entry point. In this article, we discuss how to keep up with the information that is available from the service domain. Why should you and why shouldn't you care about the information? We introduce several ways of using the information and discuss some approaches for optimizing its management.

Corporate jets fly him to a rock-star welcome from thousands of laptop-toting admirers, and, at age 34, he already has earned his place as a technology demigod. For Linus Torvalds it has been a long, strange road since 1991, when, as a computer-science student and erstwhile hacker at the University of Helsinki, everything changed -- though he didn't have a clue at the time it had.

What's available in Corels' WordPerfect 8 Linux and how can you get it? Since late last year, Corel quietly has been offering a WordPerfect 8 Linux program on its eBay Corel Store site. I found out about this only when a Corel WP8/Linux newsgroupie reported finding a curious comment about WP8 while searching the Corel support site for some information.

SAB Gateway is a versatile WLAN access controller implemented in Perl and requires only a low-performance linux computer to run, which also makes it embeddable into small Internet access devices. It delivers easy-to-use broadband access at the wireless hotspot without requiring the end-user to install any client-side software. The SAB Gateway is from March 2004 onwards released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) on SourceForge.net.

Scott McNealy used the occasion of the 2004 FOSE conference at the Washington DC Convention Center to lay to rest once and for all any notion that Sun is willing to loosen its grasp on Java in any way.

Ulf Harnhammar discovered a number of vulnerabilities in emil, a filter for converting Internet mail messages.

When Fool Jeff Fischer analyzed Linux provider Red Hat in November, he clearly showed why it was too risky at $13.01 a share. It opened at $21.56 this morning. Is it still too risky?

In one of the first non-Microsoft-funded total-cost-of-ownership studies by a major market-research firm, Windows still comes on strong. On the heels of several Microsoft-sponsored studies evaluating the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Windows vs. Linux, The Yankee Group has performed its own independent research on the same topic. And the findings are somewhat similar: Linux provides smaller companies with customized vertical applications or who have no legacy networks with better TCO than Windows.

A USB-connected and -powered data acquisition box with GPL-licensed Linux drivers and firmware, developed at the University of Stirling, UK, is being marketed through the Institute for Neuronal Computational Intelligence and Technology (INCITE), a club that helps university researchers commercialize their inventions.

The good news is that it now appears that a major tier-one OEM will start selling business desktops and laptops with Linux pre-installed to North American customers later this year. The bad news is that it won't be an option for everyone, only for large customers. And it won't be available at all until the second-half of the year.

Novell is interested in rounding out its Linux portfolio by partnering with or acquiring an embedded Linux company. However, it's too early for the company to reveal specific details of its embedded Linux strategy, company officials say.

The Device Simulator Framework (DSF) provides an easy-to-use ioctl interface to all your devices, real or imagined. Intended for experienced kernel and device driver software developers, DSF makes it easier to debug and test device code which would otherwise be difficult to simulate or recreate.

Many people have called for the increased adoption of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in developing countries in general, and in Africa in particular. The reasons center around issues of affordability, ownership, and openness. Although the use of FOSS in developing countries is increasing, a number of constraints still stifle the growth of FOSS use in these countries. The constraints are many and varied, but can be grouped into five, namely: the nature of FOSS itself, an adverse policy environment, lack of marketing, inadequate technical support, and lack of trained personnel.

Novell, which sells Linux for servers and desktop computers, is considering a move into the market for embedded computing for devices such as cell phones and vending machines.

When building any workstation, most of the focus goes to the motherboard. The features available on different boards vary and choosing the wrong board could affect your overall system performance. When choosing a board, one must look at not only which processor and type of memory the board takes but also features such as on-board peripherals and expansion slots. In this review we take a look at the two main contenders in the Opteron workstation category. We've already covered one of these boards, the Tyan Thunder K8W, in an earlier review so we'll be using it as be benchmark against the new board, the Iwill DK8X.

Last week I reviewed Win4Lin, a solution that makes it possible to run certain versions of Microsoft Windows on Linux. This week CrossOver Office is the next tool I am going to have a look at. Again my main focus will be programs I need to run myself.

Don't let that cute little Linux penguin's sort of vacuous gaze fool you -- it might be poised to become a monster. Hewlett-Packard said today that it will work with Novell to support Linux on its computers for business users worldwide. While this is not exactly a move onto your desktop anytime soon, it's a sign that Linux is indeed gaining ground in the corporate market.