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Dell’s 17-inch Studio 1747 laptop is a beefy desktop replacement that ships with Windows 7. But how does it fare with Linux instead? A few days hands-on with the laptop shows that the machine is almost perfect, save for one fatal flaw.

Open-Xchange, a provider of business-class open source collaboration software, announced the availability of data migration tools for users of Microsoft Outlook to easily move e-mails, contacts, appointments and tasks to Open-Xchange Server.

The concept of activities is a new feature introduced with KDE 4. In the old desktop model of KDE 3, the desktop was a program called “kdesktop”, which gave users the ability to have a number of virtual desktops. Although other tools like Superkaramba could be used to add more features, the essential KDE desktop ended there. When activities were introduced into KDE 4, they did not make much sense in isolation. In addition to having virtual desktops, there were activities, which the user could create and configure to have different wallpapers and different widgets. Much of the virtual desktop functionality of KDE 3 was absent and not directly connected to Plasma activities.

Despite being one of the most tightly controlled technology companies on the market, Apple has a surprisingly complicated relationship with open source. Both of Apple’s flagship operating systems, OS X and iOS are based on Darwin, which is in turn based on FreeBSD. Apple has also contributed a large amount of code back to the open source community, most notably WebKit, which is used as the browsing engine in nearly every mobile platform. Considering the recent popularity of Apple’s systems, and since there was a big Apple event happening today, their involvement in open source is worth a look.

Microsoft just received confirmation of a patent that hands the company the intellectual property of shutting an operating system down. I can’t quite recall how often Microsoft ha stalked about a faster way to shut down its operating system. It is part of the pitch of virtually every new operating system and it has remained an annoyance that it can take quite some time until the software in fact closes running applications and the operating system itself.

[Linux does this already no? - Scott]

Those of you not familiar with Linux won't be familiar with the way it lets you install new software. After 12 years with Linux, neither am I. And I think this highlights a serious problem with the way that open-source software has developed and how it can grow. The problem is choice – one of the most touted and noble reasons for using Linux in the first place. For general use, there's too much of it. It's often overwhelming, needlessly complicated and an easy excuse for change. Choice goes hand-in-hand with redundancy and duplicated effort.

Back in July we reported that Unigine Corp, the company behind the advanced Unigine gaming/3D engine, was working on its own strategy game. This game was supposed to be announced by the end of July, then in private we were told it got pushed back to the middle of August, but to start off September we finally have the announcement for this new game. Unigine OilRush is the game title and it will be available for Linux. Will this be the best Linux native game we see in 2010?

A couple weeks back I noticed the Wine-Doors project was down and on their front page they have a message "Very very broken and I don't have time to fix it" So what should users who have been using Wine-Doors, or any of the other closed projects do in the future to configure and run their favorite Windows Applications and Games on Linux or Mac?

Simple partition resizing operations, such as those described in Part 1 of this series, usually conclude successfully. Sometimes, though, you need to do something different or troubleshoot problems. This article covers some of these situations. The first topic is LVM configuration and how it interacts with partition resizing. The second topic is troubleshooting techniques. Although a complete description of all the problems that can occur when resizing partitions might fill a book, a few basic principles can help you work through many common problems. Finally, this article describes some alternatives to partition resizing, should the problems you encounter prove insurmountable.

Strange bedfellows VMware and Novell have officially released SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware, a version of Novell's open source OS that piggybacks on every copy of VMware's vSphere hypervisor. In June, VMware and Novell told the world they had agreed to an OEM deal that would see VMware distribute SUSE Linux with vSphere, and the combined product is now available to all. If you purchase a vSphere license and subscription, you also receive a subscription for patches and updates to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server at no additional cost.

ArtistX is an Ubuntu GNU/Linux-based live DVD that includes a pretty big lineup of free multimedia applications. The most recent version, ArtistX 0.9 is based on Ubuntu 9.10 and features the 2.6.31 Linux kernel, GNOME 2.28, KDE 4.3.5, Compiz Fusion, Ubiquity Installer, and more.

Ubuntu's use of sudo to simplify Linux administration is ingenious, but barely scratches the surface of what sudo can do. Follow along as Yvo Van Doorn of Likewise Software unlocks the powers of sudo.

We are all beginners at one point or another. The following is a list of tidbits and tips I have learned over my years working with Linux that will help you learn/maintain your Linux based operating system.

Red Hat is in talks to buy a JBoss cloud provisioning startup called Makara, according to a source familiar with the matter. Makara – a Red Hat JBoss partner – produces a portal enabling IT teams to set up, provision, and administer public Amazon and private Xen and VMware clouds. The two-year old company is believed to have met with virtualization giant VMware, who turned down the prospect of a deal.

Ksplice, the technology that allows Linux kernel updates without the need to reboot, is now free for Fedora. Ksplice was originally designed with Fedora in mind and the company behind the technology also announced that it would be integrated into future versions of Fedora. Currently, Ksplice is available in Enterprise flavors and free to Ubuntu Desktop.

Continued from : Is your company afraid of Linux? (Part 2 of 3) Fear #4 (Support!): This is where Linux shines. Because of the open nature of the Linux community it is considered to be the most widely supported platform and the most inexpensive. To get professional support for your Microsoft server platform, you have to either pay for a professional support plan from a Microsoft Partner or from Microsoft themselves. I’ve never run into an SMB that had purchased a professional support plan from Microsoft. To obtain one-time support for your Windows server operating system you would pay a per incident fee anywhere from $99 (next business day) to $260 (4 to 6 hour response). No support is included with the purchase of the Microsoft operating system itself. So these fees are on top of the licensing fees you pay for the right to install and use the Windows OS. Licensing for Windows Server 2008 ranges anywhere from $500 to $4000 which doesn’t include the client access licenses (CALs) which run around $40 per desktop or per user on your network.

Setting up a firewall for IPtables can be rather difficult, especially if its your first time. A firewall is something you need to have, whether you are just trying to keep hackers out, or trying to meet a requirement such as PCI compliance, or HIIPA compliance. Luckily the folks at rfxnetworks, created a CLI based configuration for IPtables.

Not many mainstream PC manufacturers have a Linux preinstalled version of their products. But some do have and the there are many other not-so-mainstream providers of Linux preinstalled laptops, netbooks and PC's. Here are a few of them you should know.

All desktop environments support camera import, image management and editing applications. But the desktop defaults are really geared towards casual users. Don’t be fooled by that, though; open source can and does offer the tools to support professional photographers and high-end enthusiasts.

Open source users, developers, and members of the global apache community gather to share insight on "Servers, The Cloud, and Innovation"