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The school district wants to move its Oracle database and Business Objects Crystal Enterprise business-intelligence software from Windows to Linux., and the debut of Business Objects' Crystal Enterprise 10 for Linux moved it a step closer to that goal.

Munich may become the biggest Microsoft Corp. customer to switch to Linux personal-computer software this week, as the city decides whether to remove the Windows operating system from 14,000 municipal computers.

The Mozilla Foundation today released Mozilla Firefox 0.9, and now begins its final push towards a 1.0 release of Firefox. New features in this release include a new default theme, a new browser migration tool, reworked theme and extension managers, a much smaller download size, a new help system, and many small bug fixes and speed tweaks. More on what's new can be found in the Burning Edge's Bigger Picture or in the Mozilla Foundation's press release about Firefox 0.9.

Looking to seize a greater share of the growing Linux-based thin-client market, Wyse Technology Inc. on Monday introduced enhanced management, security, and Web-browser capabilities on two of its Winterm desktops. Wyse also introduced version 3.2 of its thin-client Linux operating system.

I've had my primary email address for many years, and I also get email through a number of work-related aliases, including editors at newsforge.com, roblimo at slashdot.org, and rmiller at osdn.com. So I get spam. Tons of spam. And I filter it all. I filter viruses, too, not because they can affect my Linux computer, but because they suck up bandwidth. And my virus email traffic now exceeds my spam traffic by a factor of at least two to one.

A Linux bug was recently uncovered by a young Norwegian programmer that, when exploited by a simple C program, could crash most Linux 2.4 or 2.6 distributions running on an x86 architecture. "Using this exploit to crash Linux systems requires the (ab)user to have shell access or other means of uploading and running the program—like cgi-bin and FTP access," reports the discoverer, Øyvind Sæther.

In this week's Gentoo Weekly Newsletter we tell you about the approval of the Gentoo Not-For-Profit by the State of New Mexico, and point you to an alias to which bugs about new webapp packages are being assigned, with the intent of letting interested folks get involved. Don't miss the usual security info, community coverage, or the tip about using noclobber either. Enjoy!

please find here after a press-release about "rentalinux", a new Nexedi+Mandrakesoft development. It provides Mandrakelinux dekstop applications to Windows PCs, Macintosh and X11/VNC through the corporate's network, and combines server hardware rental, software setup, custom configuration, support and maintenance service in a single package.

The trouble according to Microsoft is that customers are merely using their "conversations" with Linux vendors as a crowbar to ratchet down Microsoft's pricing. There's no actual Linux adoption, they claim.

Public-sector deployments of Linux are continuing to grow at the expense of Unix and Windows. The latest Linux win is the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC), in Washington, which provides administrative support, program management and policy development services to U.S. federal courts.

Visiting one of Microsoft's open-source seminars during the next few weeks? Here's a print-out-and-keep guide to questions you might care to ask...

Wyse has responded to a booming market for Linux-based thin clients by revising its Linux-based thin-client operating system. Version 3.2 of the "Wyse-enhanced Linux" operating system is available on 5000-series Winterm clients, targeting organizations looking for a gradual transition into a full Linux-based environment.

Large and medium sized enterprises should prepare for a future of server consolidation, running both Linux and Windows while planning for the domination of Intel-based hardware, delegates at a Microsoft seminar were told last week.

Consider a recent study about Linux from the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank that, in addition to general pieces about Beltway topics, has a track record for attacking Linux, the free software. An earlier institute study, for example, suggested Linux's openness made it a boon to terrorists. Most security experts say the opposite: that open review makes software stronger and thus safer.

Got all the time in world? Then, you can package, configure and deploy enterprise Linux without relying on big vendors. After all, said IT author Steve Shah, most Linux distributions are built on open source products. But, what IT shop has loads of time for trial and error? So, when you buy an enterprise distribution like Red Hat or SuSE, you're mostly buying time and assurance, not necessarily just technology. Even so, free alternatives to commercial distributions are attractive, said Shah. He also shares some tips on comparing, configuring and deploying distributions. Shah is co-author of several Linux administration guides, the latest being "Red Hat Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide" from Osborne/McGraw-Hill Media.

"While the aims of the F/OSS movement in Brazil are liberty not (necessarily) economy," reports Simon Phipps in his blog from a conference in Porte Alegre, "the people are open-minded, reasonable and friendly and recognise the value of platform independence as a vehicle of freedom." By far the largest technology contingent in the 'User Groups' area of the conference, Phipps adds, was the contingent of Java user groups.