Linurati writes "According to vnunet.com, Linux and Windows are neck and neck when it comes to security, but 'misleading figures and surveys are muddying the waters.' The article lays blame on both sides for the misleading information." From the article: "...Microsoft had made real progress on security in the past two years, but that the increasing number of Linux enthusiasts coming into the market would help the open source alternative in the long run."

An anonymous reader writes "Asa Dotzler of The Mozilla Foundation compares the explosive growth of Firefox to the anything but explosive growth of Linux and what it needs to do to get there for the "regular user" AKA mom, dad and grandma Bootsie."

Amy Kucharik writes "Fed up with Windows systems management? A Linux conversion may be your ticket away from the daily hassles of managing and licensing domain controllers and related software devices. In this tip, Paul Murphy discusses the evolution of LDAP and how using it, along with Linux, can make an administrator's job easier."

Linux Hack writes "LinuxHardware.org has published their latest review and this one covers the top processors from both the big x86 manufacturers. If you want to see who's on top under Linux, you should check out this review. There's something here for both Intel and AMD fanboys!"

Michael R. Crusoe writes "UPEK, provider of popular fingerprint sensors to IBM's T42 notebooks and others, has announced that they will be providing a BioAPI compliant library to perform biometric authentication under GNU/Linux. Will Linux be the first operating system to have integrated biometric user authentication 'out of the box'?"

aneroid writes "eWeek has a story on Microsoft allowing a third party to present a 'hands-on lab' that allowed attendees to play with a range of Linux desktop software at its annual worldwide partner show in Minnesota this weekend. It was run by Don Johnson (not the actor), who explained in true MS style how the things that are considered wrong with Windows are planned or an advantage. Whether it's for the desktop or server, wasn't clear. People did get to 'see the Apache Web server in action' and a KDE desktop.Is this more of a preemptive strike where the Linux experience is so bad (slow machines, old software) they wouldn't bother to check it out in the future, thus securing an existing partner/client? Or are they that confident people won't stray if they're invited to sample the competition? According to the Register, 'Microsoft is unlikely to stop developers moving to Linux and open source so its best hope lies in articulating a strategy of co-existence to limit the 'damage' to its business.'"

arkanoid.dk writes "Sources close to Progeny, Mandriva and Turbolinux report that a new Enterprise Linux distribution is on its way. Apparently, the distribution will be based on Debian 3.1 Sarge and will form the foundation of the next server distributions from the three companies. The three companies hope that the new distribution will enable them to compete with the market leaders Red Hat and Novell Inc's server distributions. An interesting part is that the new system should support both DEB (Debian package) and RPM (Red Hat Package Management) to enable better cross-compatibility with other Linux flavours. The vendor said: 'It will have a nice, Web-based front end for service management, which Sarge lacks. It's basically oriented toward edge-of-the-network type applications, such as ISP software.'"

A anonymous reader writes "Branden Robinson has posted his third report as Debian Project Leader. This report covers the Sarge release, the status of security support, delegation activities, Mozilla Firefox trademark license, the need for community donation for a new hosting site and new hardware, and more."

WillAffleckUW writes "Fujitsu, which already offers Red Hat Linux on its servers, is announcing plans to offer SUSE Linux as well, according to an Infoworld article. Sadly, it's only for servers and services for Intel, not for AMD. Still, good news, in that you can go Red or Blue and still be Linux true!"

RyuMaou asks: "I'm about to move a small company from an old, ailing Windows server to some flavor of Linux and I want to make sure they're proprietary information is safe. Here's the problem: I've only run Linux as an application server, behind the firewall, in a Novell environment. Time is short and I have limited resources and want to read at least one really great book on Linux security, then follow that up with some good reinforcement. I know the information is mostly available on the Internet for free, but I like reading actual books, not printouts. So, if you had to pick five books, or fewer, on Linux security, what would you read?"

John Pratt writes "FredCK, developer of the popular FCKEditor, recently raised $600 from supporters through Fundable to port his open source HTML editor to Safari. Fundable is a new site that lets groups of people pool money for specific purposes, like software features. Unlike generic donation dropboxes (such as PayPal buttons), if a group's targeted collection isn't reached after 2 or 4 weeks, everyone gets a complete refund." Newsforge has a piece discussing the site as well.

AccUser writes "Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Ltd, founders of the popular Ubuntu Linux-based operating system, have today announced the creation of The Ubuntu Foundation with an initial funding commitment of US$10m. From the article: 'The Ubuntu Foundation will employ core Ubuntu community members to ensure that Ubuntu will remain fully supported for an extended period of time, and continue to produce new releases of the distribution. As a first step, the Foundation announces that Ubuntu version 6.04, due for release in April 2006, will be supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.'"

An anonymous reader writes "After suffering manpower shortages and other issues, Debian says it has finally addressed concerns that it was falling behind on security. Debian's elected leader Branden Robinson yesterday flagged an inquiry into the processes by which security updates are released, citing a potential lack of transparency and communication failures. It was also an appropriate time to add new members to Debian's security team, as several have been inactive for a while, Robinson said. Debian initial security problems can be found in this earlier Slashdot posting."

amorelock asks: "I manage a small group of 4-6 Linux software engineers / developers that are part of a larger engineering organization. Our IT department has finally, after several months of pushing-back, decided to support our Linux workstations. The have requested that we use an off the shelf distribution that will be fairly easy to manage and maintain (we're talking about Microsoft folks with practically zero Linux experience). We are evaluating both Novell Linux Desktop 9 and Redhat Enterprise WS. Have any fellow Slashdot folks had experience with either of these two distributions, and if so, what did you like or dislike about either of them?"

RicJD writes "The BBC is reporting on a school in England which has found a way to save money through Open Source Software. It goes on to explain the idea behind OSS, and briefly how they've incorporated it into the school system. Could this be the way to show the UK government that savings can be had through OSS?" Likely an adoption spurred by the education report we reported on earlier this year.

Warrior points out Peter Seebach's look into his Series 2 TiVo, writing "There are a lot of sites about 'hacking' the TiVo, to do this to it and that to it (and there's always the other thing too). After all, half the fun of owning something that runs Linux is to make it do something more (or different) than it was intended to do. But most of us only need so many Web servers (off the top of my head, I think I have 10 or 15 Web servers in my house already, including the embedded systems)."

Provataki writes "TuxTops reviews Fedora Core 4 and finds a number of problems with the popular distribution: high memory usage, usability problems, bugs, bloat. They awarded FC4 with 6 out of 10 at the end as despite its quirks they also find it a 'powerful distro' and easy to use."

Bill Kendrick writes "Back in January, ZDNet reported that the city of Vienna, Austria was looking to move at least a portion of its desktops to Linux. Well, it looks like it happened (in German; use the fish). Their official distro is based on Debian with KDE, and is called WEINUX." Update: 07/06 12:49 GMT by T : Several readers wrote to correct the spelling here: the correct name of the distro is "WIENUX."

Rob writes "SCO Group Inc's attempt to change its legal case against IBM Corp for the third time has been denied by the judge, who has also set the two companies a deadline to present their respective evidence with specificity. Despite repeated public declarations that it has evidence Linux contains Unix code that infringes its copyright, SCO has yet to present any evidence to the court." Bad news for them all around, lately.

Masq666 wrote to mention a ZDNet article discussing difficulties Debian is having with security updates. From the article: "...Lack of manpower also appears to be adding to Debian's security woes. Michael Stone, another member of Debian's security team, expressed his frustration to the organisation's security e-mail mailing list in mid-June, saying there was no effective tracking of security problems."