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The deal is done. Oracle now owns Sun. Oracle's main message to Sun's customers seems to be "Don't worry, be happy." That's not easy when Oracle is not explaining in any detail what it will be doing with open-source software offerings like MySQL, OpenOffice and OpenSolaris. In general, we know that Sun's software product catalog will be cut back and that many Sun staffers will soon be laid off. Historically, when Oracle acquires a company, deep cuts are the rule. For example, Oracle fired about 5,000 workers after acquiring PeopleSoft. This time around, Oracle is saying that there will be only about a thousand layoffs. In particular, although no one is going on record, it's feared that Sun's open-source groups will take the brunt of these cuts.

At this year's Mobile World Congress(MWC) in Barcelona, while Microsoft announced its Windows Phone 7 Series this week, a number of other companies are announcing their new Android-based devices. The open source Android OS devices, which range from mobile phones and notebooks, to tablets and Internet Devices, include updates to popular well known handsets and several new mobiles.

Embedding copyright info into each photo may sound like a daunting proposition, but digiKam provides a nifty template feature which lets you create copyright templates and apply them to multiple photos in one go.

Eric Geier reviews 10 essential Firefox add-ons that will make your cross-platform Mozilla web browser even better. He finds add-ons to help fix annoyances, save time, discover advanced functionality, and stay connected.

Well, I figured that I should take an opportunity to introduce a few opensource OSs that really haven't been in the lime light much. We all know about Linux and many of us also know about Darwin and BSD. Still some know about OpenSolaris. Which ever ones you know or don't here's a chance to get the scoop.

When I write about the disposable PC, blame for the creation and maintaining of such a culture does not belong to a single entity. It has gotten to the point where hardware has become so cheap that whenever someone who lacks any real technical knowledge comes across a computing problem (whether it be hardware or software related) has no problem running out and purchasing a new replacement. Microsoft and retail stores add to this culture.

To compliment our ‘ten essential Python tips for beginners‘ and ‘ten more essential Python tips‘ features, we’ve compiled yet another collection of ten gems to make your Python experience that much more worthwhile…

Linux Pro Magazine met the author of numerous standard works in informatics and the most famous Linux critic at the Fosdem in Brussels.

It all originated from the need to host GNUmed Live CDs, VMware images and so on. Nothing comes for free and there was no way we could host these images on the GNUmed servers. That is why we started the GNUmed Live project on sourceforge. This gives us the room we need to offer GNUmed in a form that allows users to try GNUmed without going through the whole installation process.

The "operating system for embedded smart objects", Contiki, has been updated to version 2.4 with new experimental platforms and improved stability. The BSD licensed operating system is designed to be small, highly portable and work in networked, but memory constrained systems, such as sensor network nodes. Typical configurations can use as little as 2KB of RAM and 40KB of ROM and Contiki has been ported to computers such as the Commodore 64 and microcontrollers such as the TI MSP430 and Atemel AVR.

Microsoft made Software Piracy Prevention a voluntary thing. Of course Microsoft will probably pitch a different explanation, but what they actually did was post an "update" to Windows 7 that had lots of anti-piracy software in it, and told their customers that it was "voluntary" to install the anti-piracy software.

There are a few good reasons why open source fans should support the Business Software Alliance. I've never made a secret of the fact that I dislike the Business Software Alliance (BSA). It's questionable statistics and its sweeping generalisations make for annoying reading at the best of times. But recently I've been thinking that perhaps open source advocates should get behind the BSA.

For the longest time I have been less than a fan of KDE 4. From the initial release, up until about 4.3.0 I was, well, less than impressed. It was buggy; it felt unstable at all points; and what was worse, for any new user who made the mistake of using a distribution with KDE 4, it gave the Linux operating system a bad name. No one wanted to use a desktop that might crash at any given moment, suck up 100% of a system CPU, or lose data. It simply wasn’t worth the effort. But this morning I decided to give the latest iteration of KDE (4.3.5) a try and see what it had to offer. Could it make stable what had previously been so lacking in stability? And, more importantly, could it make me think KDE was once again a viable desktop for every day use. Let’s take a look and see.

Maybe you've seen your favorite extensions fall behind when new Firefox releases roll out, but you haven't known what to do about it. A new-ish Mozilla add-on not only enables technically incompatible extensions for testing, but makes reporting actual incompatibilities easy.

The MoBlock project caters to advanced Linux users and allows them fine-grain control over which hosts are allowed to connect to your computer and which hosts can be connected from the machine. We’ll look at how to install, configure and monitor MoBlock on your Linux machine…

Eric S. Raymond wrote, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” He calls this Linus’ law. The open source community uses this argument to assert that open source software is more secure than proprietary software. Advocates of proprietary software attack this argument on a variety of grounds, but here’s a little secret: Raymond was right. One cannot deny the logic. In fact, it is a tautology. If you assume that all individuals have a non-zero probability of finding and fixing a bug, then all you need is “enough” individuals. A million monkeys banging on a million keyboards will eventually produce Twelfth Night. Mathematically, the many-eyeballs argument, and the million-monkeys argument are equivalent.

Cherokee is a very fast, flexible and easy to configure Web Server. It supports the widespread technologies nowadays: FastCGI, SCGI, PHP, CGI, TLS and SSL encrypted connections, virtual hosts, authentication, on the fly encoding, load balancing, Apache compatible log files, and much more. This tutorial shows how you can install Cherokee on an Ubuntu 9.10 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

The Southern California Linux Expo SCALE 8x has always had the tradition of trying something new every year. This year is no different. SCALE 8x joins international Linux events like FOSDEM in Europe and linux.conf.au in Australia in providing Ipv6 capability to exhibitors at this year’s event. As part of its service to exhibitors, SCALE will provide both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to each of the exhibitors’ booths.

Intel and Nokia are teaming up to tame mobile Linux fragmentation. During a presentation today at Mobile World Congress, the companies announced that they are bringing together their respective Linux-based operating systems under a single banner. The combined platform, called MeeGo, supports multiple architectures and will be suitable for use across a wide range of mobile and embedded form factors, including netbooks and smartphones.

What's small and pink, incorporates a Linux kernel and an embedded ARM compatible processor, and let's you set up your own personal cloud?