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User-Mode Linux was merged into the 2.5 Linux development kernel back in September of 2002. Since that time, Jeff Dike has continued to provide patches to keep the project up to date, but the code within the stable 2.6 kernel has gotten stale and no longer even properly compiles. A request was sent to thelkml asking 2.6 maintainer Andrew Morton what would be required to get the latest patch merged into his -mm tree.

GNU Linux, the free computer operating system, has won far more converts in corporate data centers than on desktop personal computers. But as more user-friendly software makes its way onto the Linux desktop, the free operating system is starting to make progress in its David-versus-Goliath competition against Microsoft, the dominant power in PC software.

Yet, the misperception about Windows persists despite the fact that last year, there were far more "patches" from competitors such as Mandrake (which had 119), Debian (184) and even Sun Microsystems (68). "Microsoft is producing far more secure products than Linux but the question is why don't we read about 'another hole in Linux?'" asks Mr Pickup.

Five months after completing its US$31 million (AU$44.4 million) acquisition of Sistina Software, Red Hat released the source code for all of Sistina's proprietary software last Thursday, including its Global File System, under an open source license.

The latest version of Always Current Lineox Enterprise Linux includes packages built from Red Hat Global File system sources, the firm said.

The results of the second annual ITtoolbox IT Spending Survey demonstrate that IT budgets have increased over 2003. The survey, which was sponsored by Hewlett-Packard, was conducted by ITtoolbox, the leading provider of information for professionals in the IT workplace. The purpose of the survey was to provide insight into current and future purchasing trends of corporate IT departments worldwide.

These new products specifically address the growing market for clusters in the range from hundreds to thousands of host computers. They reduce the cost of the switch network, and simplify the installation and operation of large clusters.

Oracle, the leading enterprise solutons provider, and open source and Linux operator Red Hat have further strengthened their partnership with the launch of an Oracle-Red Hat 'Linux Enterprise Applications Porting' (LEAP) center in Singapore.

Open source software could make the next generation of Internet businesses successful under the principle of `many hands make light work'.

Last week, I talked about the IBM cell processor expected for Sony PlayStation 3.This week I want to think out loud about what happens in the industry if Toshiba launches a PC based on this processor into the Asian market and IBM promptly follows suit with a series aimed at the American and European markets. Such a machine would run Linux, be compatible with most Linux software

This article is based on a talk that I first gave at Warburg-Pincus' annual technology conference in May of 2003. Since then, I have delivered versions of the talk more than twenty times, at locations ranging from the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the UK Unix User's Group, Microsoft Research in the UK, IBM Hursley, British Telecom, Red Hat's internal "all-hands" meeting, and BEA's eWorld conference. I finally wrote it down as an article for an upcoming book on open source," Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software," edited by J. Feller, B. Fitzgerald, S. Hissam, and K. R. Lakhani and to be published by MIT Press in 2005.

Ken Preslan sent out a mail to the Linux kernel mailing list announcing that Red Hat has released the GFS under the GPL, open-sourcing the cluster file system. They're now targetting towards getting GFS included in the mainstream kernel.

IBM, Dell, Intel and Oracle, among others, last week formed the OpenIB Alliance to develop an open-source version of the InfiniBand software stack.

Nexedi.org has published an article introducing "umibuilder," an interesting free software tool that can be used to update Linux packages. The tool is perhaps most useful for automating security updates of systems using Mandrake Linux. Because it downloads the latest versions of RPMs from the Internet, Umibuilder can also be used to automate security updates of Mandrake systems, according to the article.

Open source has become hip, trendy, dope, and cool. "Based on Open Source Technology" is used by more than one proprietary software company as a marketing boast. Even Microsoft, everybody's favorite symbol of software proprietarism, now boasts about releasing software under an open source license. Obviously, the phrase "Open Source" is now considered a plus when trying to sell software. Will this lead to more open source contributions by companies trying to associate themselves with this "movement" or will it lead to the death of open source as we know it?

At the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC) yesterday, Novell announced the launch of its High Performance Computing (HPC) Linux Competency Network, a program designed to attract technology partners with supercomputing expertise as well as fellow travellers keen to tap into the growing market for supercomputing solutions.

Red Hat lifted the wraps on its storage file system based on Linux and made its source code available under the General Public License (GPL), Red Hat spokeswoman Leigh Day said. Called Red Hat Global File System (GFS), the cluster file system and volume manager combo are essentially the same product that the company picked up in the December when it purchased Sistina Software.

Sun attacks Red Hat as being expensive and not fitting of the enterprise, while trying to promote the benefits of Open Source in the enterprise. Says they would attack SUSE if SUSE had any marketshare. Interesting, since Sun's Java Desktop is based on SUSE Linux.