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First they wrestled down Microsoft, now they're litigating against other big IT players: Eolas intends to enforce its patent on web technologies and plug-ins for integrating interactive content at all cost. However, a partner of the legal firm representing Eolas assured the readers of German Focus magazine that the vendor does not intend to cripple the internet. The lawyer also said that individuals, such as Facebook users or bloggers, using the technologies for integrating, for example, videos into their web pages or profiles, have nothing to fear. Litigation against such individuals doesn't make sense economically, he added.

Is Red Hat making a play for the open source database market? Linux leader Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) is investing in open source database vendor EnterpriseDB, the official announcement is set for release on Tuesday October 27th. The official press release does not disclose the exact amount that Red Hat is investing, but it is part of a $19M series C round of funding. EnterpriseDB is one of the leading commercial backers behind the PostgreSQL(also known as Postgres) database. While the Red Hat investment in EnterpriseDB maybe new, EnterpriseDB and Red Hat are hardly strangers. EnterpriseDB's president Ed Boyajian is a former Red Hat exec. Red Hat is also no stranger to PostgreSQL either.

During an Oct. 26 phone briefing today, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth described the Ubuntu 9.10 desktop, server and cloud strategy to members of the IT media. WorksWithU tuned in and posed some key questions to Shuttleworth. Here are 10 highlights from the call.

Vuurmuur 0.8 bèta 2 is released. Vuurmuur is a powerful Firewall Manager built on top of the Linux Iptables.

LXer Feature: 26-Oct-2009

The O is for October, harvest time here in NW Ohio USA. A beat-slicer, a book review, and a milestone release compose this trio of reviews for the Fall season in Linux audio fashion.

Windows 7 is now officially out. But in the next month four top-notch Linux versions will hit final release.

When it comes to video playback on Linux, the premiere choice for video acceleration is currently using VDPAU with its CPU-efficient, GPU-accelerated capabilities that even has no problems playing 1080p video files with extremely low-end hardware. However, VDPAU is not yet widespread in all Linux video drivers, and other free software developers have been working on improving other areas of the Linux video stack too.

Dropbox is a storage application and service operated by Evenflow, Inc. The service enables users to store and sync files online and between computers.Dropbox has a cross-platform client (Linux for x86 and x86_64, Mac, Windows and the iPhone) that enables users to drop any file into a Dropbox folder that is then synced to the web and the users’ other computers with the Dropbox client. Files in the Dropbox folder may then be shared with other Dropbox users or accessed from the web. Users may also upload files manually through a web browser.

When dealing with large distributed systems, knowing some basic performance and failure numbers helps you understand what you can reasonably expect both in terms of performance and reliability.

Tasktop Technologies has announced updated versions of its Tasktop Pro task management for application lifecycle management (ALM) toolsuite, and of Eclipse Mylyn. New features include time-tracking, document sharing, and ALM system interoperability that fills a gap between software development delivery and Agile project tracking and management. Tasktop Pro is built on Mylyn, a task-focused interface for Eclipse that reduces information overload and makes multi-tasking easier for developers.

In Part 1 we learned some basic network sniffing and stumbling with SWScanner on Linux. Today Eric Geiers shows us some more excellent network discovery and probing utilities: KwifiManager, tcpdump, and Wireshark.

It goes almost without saying that the release of Windows 7 is important for Microsoft to stem the tide of customer dissatisfaction with Vista, which has been extremely damaging to the Microsoft brand, and has caused it to lose users to both the Macintosh and Linux.

While Microsoft was assembling a promotional booth to celebrate their Windows 7 launch directly opposite the Japan Linux Symposium in Tokyo, Microsoft's biggest competitor couldn't resist spontaneously recognizing the textbook exercise in irony.

Despite the similarity in name to SlackBuilds.org, GSB does not simply provide build scripts - it includes a complete set of Slackware binary packages for GNOME. It also optionally provides packages related to, but which are not part of, the GNOME project, including OpenOffice.org, the AbiWord word processor and Bluefish, an editor for web developers. The current stable version of GSB is 2.26.3. GSB 2.28.0 is presently under development. Packages are available for both the 32-bit and 64-bit builds of Slackware.

Dell is currently flogging a cheap-as-chips netbook that apparently comes loaded with that well-known Microsoft operating system, Ubuntu 8.04. Anyone dropping in on the computer maker's UK product website will be able to buy an Intel-based Inspiron Mini 10 laptop for £199 a pop. And, according to the blurb on the site, one ickle mobile computer in its current range is being shipped with Microsoft's, er, Linux-flavoured OS. Shurely shome mishtake, we think.

One of the striking aspects of the free software community is its obsession with licences. It's as if within every hacker there's a lawyer struggling to get out. But maybe it's not so surprising; as Larry Lessig reminded us, “code is law”, and the reverse is also true in the sense that the licence adopted has a big impact on how the software is produced. That explains, in part, why recent discussions of Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun – and hence MySQL – have once more put free software licences under the microscope.

We looked back 6 months and chose 10 of our Linux computer recipients and spoke with them individually. More to the point , we presented them with a series of questions.

I think this bundle (the book and DVD) was a limited offer and unfortunately, it's taken me just a bit too long get to my review to take advantage of the package. Nevertheless, the products are still available individually, and are both written and presented by Barrie North. But let's back up a bit.

While Ubuntu 9.10 is using GRUB2 by default for its boot-loader on new installations, GRUB 2.0 has actually yet to be released even after many years in development. However, on this Sunday afternoon version 2 of GNU GRUB is closer to seeing the light of day...