Dolda2000 writes "Seeking to achieve 100% software freedom, RMS is now calling for action for a free BIOS. From the article: "The most uncooperative company is Intel, which has started a sham 'open source' BIOS project. The software consists of all the unimportant parts of of a BIOS, minus the hard parts. It won't run, and doesn't bring us any closer to a BIOS that does. It is just a distraction. By contrast, AMD cooperates pretty well." For reference, there are currently two projects for a free BIOS that I know of: LinuxBIOS and OpenBIOS."

ScorpFromHell writes "This article gives examples of some corporations in India which have gone the OSS/Linux way, or are starting out. And it seems that Linux has made these corporations to take a look at other OSS applications too. Slowly and steadily OSS seems to be heard even outside the academic circles and the mailing lists. Localisation still remains one of the main focus of many OSS projects in India, which is a huge task as India has 15 "official" languages, each with its own script. There are thousands of dialects more if they are to be considered too! But without localisation it is difficult to introduce computers (let alone OSS) to the majority of the Indian population, even if it is to be one computer per village! One of the other stumbling blocks seems to be unavailability of Linux professionals. May be it is because Microsoft donates money and its software to the schools at subsidized prices that not many students learn about Linux?"

aneroid writes "In response to John Dvorak's "How to Kill Linux" column, LinuxWorld has a riposte to the columnist's assertations. From the article: "Because most of the time, with mainstream devices, I work out of the box. For the "savvy user" and OEM builder, the Linux driver "problem" isn't the problem it was. The days when my poor user had to sweat blood to get me onto a laptop are long gone. Sure, if I get slung onto some random old machine there are still wrinkles, but from what I see on the Windows support forums, that's hardly unique." <update> The story is actually from GrokLaw originally - credit where credit is due.

literate asks: "I just presented the third of three lectures advocating the use of Linux and Open Source software. The first two were at the Desktop Summit Conference and SCALE3X, Southern California Linux Expo where I presented on the subject of the use of Open Source Software in small schools. Last night I presented on the use of Open Source software to secure business communications for the monthly meeting of the Open Source Software for Business Peer Group of Tech Point Indiana's largest technology trade group. Linux & FLOSS advocacy is my way of giving back to the community. There were dozens of great presentations at both conferences, which made me wonder if it might be time for someone to start collecting the best presentations, and make them available for quality presenters so that they can leverage these incredible resources beyond the one or two uses they might otherwise have?"

Buddha Joe wrote in to mention that the lack of Windows updates for Wine users is the result of a Microsoft's active targeting of Wine users. ZDNet has the story. From the article: "As the most popular third-party translation technology in use, Wine was the first emulator to be specifically tested for via WGA"

gewg_ writes "John C. Dvorak thinks he knows the way Redmond can kill Linux. Basing his premise on the relative dearth of device drivers available for Linux (compared to what is available for Windows), he sees an opportunity for the Borg to embrace and extinguish." From the article: "The immediate usefulness of Linux running under Windows is obvious. You can use all the Windows drivers for all the peripherals that don't run under Linux. Drivers have always been an issue with Linux as PC users have gotten spoiled with Windows driver support. Today's user wants to grab just about anything and not worry about installing it and making it work."

An anonymous reader writes "With a press release Mandrakesoft has announced the acquisition of Conectiva. 'Mandrakesoft, the number one European Linux company, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Conectiva, the number one Linux company in Brazil and Latin America. This acquisition is expected to increase significantly Mandrakesoft's size and R&D capabilities.'"

joseamuniz asks: "After giving Linux classes to Secondary School Teachers, I got in touch with a non-profit organization called UNETE. This association has donated 1,523 computer labs to public schools in Mexico. I told them about Linux, and they are interested in equipping a beta computer lab with this Operating System, with Intel PIII, 256 MB RAM PCs. The more they like this lab, the higher chances to include Linux in the new labs donated by this institution." What hardware configurations and software packages would you install on such a machine to show off the real power of Linux in an educational environment?

rednaxel writes "This morning, both companies issued press releases about the merge. French Mandrakesoft is acquiring all shares of brazilian Conectiva for a total amount of 1.79 million EUR (2.3 million USD) in stock." CNet has coverage of the merger as well. From the article: "This won't elevate us to the status of Red Hat or Novell/SuSE yet, of course, but this is a significant growth for us..."

An anonymous reader writes "Jobo AG originally fielded its $550 Giga Vu Pro as a tool for digital photography buffs, but this small embedded computer, running a Linux 2.4 kernel, has much broader potential, according to an article at LinuxDevices.com. A free software development kit for the device is now available at sourceforge.net, along with instructions for loading software into flash memory, a tutorial on turning the device into a Doom game console, and a contributions page for those willing to share their new apps."

jeremy writes "LQ Radio has just posted the third in a series of audio clips from the recent SCALE 3X Expo. Clips posted so far include the Flight Gear booth, LinuxChix LA and Brion Vibber of Wikipedia. Still to come are Linux Astronomy, LAMPSIG and a conversation with SCALE's Media Director. All the audio clips are being released under a Creative Commons license."

duncan bayne writes "I have just installed Vector Linux SOHO 5.0 RC2 on my old P150 laptop. Overall I was very impressed, and have posted a brief review on my blog. This distro has a lot to offer, especially to schools and other organisations trying to extract more useful life from obsolete hardware."

hdm writes "The Metasploit Project has published a security analysis of the Arkeia Network Backup Client. Anyone able to connect to TCP port 617 can gain read/write access to the filesystem of any host running the Arkeia agent software. This appears to be an intentional design decision on the part of the Arkeia developers. A long-winded description of this issue, complete with screen shots, demonstration code, and packet captures can be found in the research article. Arkeia has been credited with being the first commercial backup product for the Linux platform."

loki99 points out a CNET story about the direction Red Hat's development has taken (and changes in the wind), writing "Michael Tiemann, vice president of Red Hat, admits that after exclusively concentrating on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in recent years, they left those 'early adopters' behind. 'It insulted some of our best supporters. But worse, we lost our opportunity to do customer-driven innovation.' Tiemann said." The recent Boston FUDcon (mentioned in the linked article) is one example of how the company wants to revitalize non-corporate interest.

A8 writes "There is a new toy (aka the S101) around the corner from a German company called Road GmbH. Looks like the Nokia Communicator, but is a little PC with GSM, GPRS, IrDA, Bluetooth, WLAN -- you name it, running Linux 2.6/Qtopia! Sorry seems like the page is in German only." There are also versions based on the same hardware but running Windows CE and Symbian.

An anonymous reader writes "Following in the wake of its previous certifications, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 has achieved EAL4 certification on 'an IBM eServer.' This puts SLES9 in the same league as Windows 2000 for sales in the government sector and is the first Linux distro to achieve an EAL4 certification."

RMX writes "LinuxWorld Australia has an interesting article discussing Linux Desktop adoption in Cisco. Cisco "already converted more than 2,000 of its engineers to Linux desktops...plans to move many laptop users to the platform over the next few years...the driver for Linux on the desktop is not cost savings, but easier support. Manning estimates that it takes a company approximately one desktop administrator to support 40 Windows PCs, while one administrator can support between 200 and 400 Linux desktops.'"

MarcQuadra asks: "I've been a Linux user since 1998, and I admin Mac OS X machines at work, but I have yet to find a distribution that comes out-of-the-box with modern directory services. Sure, there are guides to kerberize and set up OpenLDAP, but before I can start pushing Linux as an alternative at work I'll need a few things. Are there any distributions out there that can auto-mount SMB shares as home directories without heavy modification? How about a distro that's based on OpenLDAP and can easily be configured with LDAP-enabled SAMBA and Kerberos? Am I missing something, or is this not a priority with the community at-large?"

IainMH writes "Over at the BBC, there is a report that despite the slow build up, IBM is spending $100m (£52m) over the next three years beefing up its commitment to Linux software. It continues: 'The cash injection will be used to help its customers use Linux on every type of device from handheld computers and phones right up to powerful servers.'" Commentary and coverage also available on TechNewsWorld and ZDNet.

bonch writes "Rosegarden 1.0 has been released for Linux. From the website: 'Rosegarden is one of the most comprehensive Linux music software projects, and is the only Linux application to offer full composition and recording capabilities to musicians who prefer to use classical notation.' Rosegarden is free software under the GPL. Take a tour or find a package for your distro."