uninet writes "To catch up on what's new since our last full interview, Mandrakesoft co-founder Gaël Duval recently agreed to talk with me about where the company is heading and other interesting IT current events, such as the Linux Core Consortium and Apple's Mac mini. You can read the new interview on OFB.biz."

A beautiful mind writes "Linux usage got boosted in the financial sector thanks to mainstream suppliers like IBM and Sun from 27 percent last year to 58 percent in 2005, according to a report from financial technology researchers Finextra. In fact the growing support for Linux has been the single biggest technology change in financial organisations over the past 12 months, say the researchers writing in the Financial Technology Strategies 2005 survey."

LazloToth asks: "Short and sweet: with so many distributions of Linux to choose from, and so many of them good to excellent, which Linux delivers the best balance of stability, high-level support options, security, rapid updates, and ease of administration? If an admin wants to standardize on one Linux distribution and have the best of all worlds on everything from file-and-print servers to database boxes, what, in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of Linuxes - - the one that does it all while also making upper management feel warm and fuzzy?"

wiredog writes "From Government Computer News comes this story about Red Hat's new lobbying office near Washington DC, and mentions that RHEL 4 will have Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4 certification."

greysky writes "This story on Foxnews.com reports that as part of the larger World Social Forum, Barlow spoke on how open source software can help alleviate financial problems of developing countries: "Already, Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger"." NPR talks about how Brazil plans to switch 300,000 machines over.

black hole sun writes "Microsoft bigwig Nick McGrath claims that Linux security is highly exaggerated, and that the open source development model is 'fundamentally flawed.' The gist of his argument appears to be his claim of lack of accountability among distributors, coupled with generic statements short on facts. 'Who is accountable for the security of the Linux kernel? Does Red Hat, for example, take responsibility? It cannot, as it does not produce the Linux kernel. It produces one distribution of Linux.' He goes on to say that 'Linux is not ready for mission-critical computing. There are fundamental things missing,' pointing out the lack of a development environment and no single 'sign-on system' giving reference to Microsoft's foundering .Net passport program." I guess Linux can only aspire to the greatness of Windows when it has such secure applications as Outlook and Internet Explorer. Historically those have been proven to be of a caliber all their own.

prostoalex writes "O'Reilly's LinuxDevCenter features Freevo, 'a media platform that brings together various applications for video recording and playback.' They interview the developers, and talk about the current plans for the project. Freevo is not just a standalone product, it's a platform to which other developers, interested in home media on Linux, can plug into."

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices has a story about the Samsung Miniket, a digital camcorder the size of a pack of cards that also works as a portable MP3 player, webcam, voice recorder, storage device, and more. The Miniket (annoying Flash and sound) will be available in February or March in the US, for $600-$700, with a rugged 'sports' model to follow. The device runs Linux, boots in under a second, and is the first of several products from Samsung that will run a new variation of Linux called 'ARM-no-MMU.' LinuxDevices also has a whitepaper about Samsung research that shows the new Linux variant to be faster than normal Linux."

Eugenia writes "Andrew Roberts posted a long and informative review of the newly released Arch Linux 0.7. It describes the installation method, post-install configuration, features included, package management and the available support for the distro. Trying to describe Arch Linux in a single sentence, many would say that it's a distro that's almost as speedy as Gentoo is, as simple as Slackware is and with a package management similar to Debian's. [Semi-]advanced Linux users would probably like it a lot."

tola writes "The Ubuntu development team have reached their first milestone in the production of the Live CD version of the upcoming release of Ubuntu codenamed 'Hoary Hedgehog.' This edition features a completely redesigned system for creating Live CDs. While some people have tried rough previews, this is the first proper milestone for the live CD version. Anyone, especially folks who are using our previous release (4.10 'Warty Warthog'), are encouraged to try this out. The Live CD runs completely off of the CD and will not touch any of the data on your hard drive so is a fantastic way to get a preview of new features in the upcoming Ubuntu release without upgrading your system. ISO images for i386, AMD64 and PowerPC can be downloaded from Ubuntu."

Anonymous Coward writes "The first beta of Mandrakelinux 10.2 has been released. New package versions and features include some changes to the installation program, kernel 2.6.10, glibc 2.3.4 and gcc 3.4.3. You also get KDE 3.3.2, Gnome, 2.8.1, and GTK 2.6.1. Mozilla-firefox replaces Mozilla, and you will also find gimp 2.2, cdrecord 2.01.01a21 with DVD+R Dual Layers support, OpenOffice.org 1.1.4, Postgresql 8.0, and MySQL 4.1.9. Improvements are also seen in the Mandrakelinux Control Center ergonomy, to ease the network configuration with a better integration of the firewall tool. OSDir tours Mandrakelinux 10.2 Beta 1 with GNOME and KDE in their Screenshot Tours."

Kinnu provides a pointer to this story about India's increasing use of Linux. They mention a battlefield PDA running Linux, making Linux the standard OS for students, and some more about the Simputer.

ResQuad writes "Everyone loves Windows viruses, right? Well, the crazy people over at NewsForge (owned by the same people that own Slashdot) decided to try running Windows viruses with Wine. So next time you receive an email virus, strike up Wine and see what you can do (or not)."

nodata101 writes "ZDNet reports that the city of Vienna, Austria is looking to move at least a portion of its desktops to Linux. Of those that do not move to Linux, another portion will switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org, although some users will remain on Microsoft Office. You can read the English report here, and the full report auf Deutsch here."

Insane_zoD writes "Looks like Sun is attempting to keep up with IBM in opening up patents for FOSS-based projects. From the news release: 'By giving open source developers free access to Sun OpenSolaris related patents under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), the company is fostering open innovation and establishing a leadership role in the framework of a patent commons that will be recognized across the globe.'"

Blue writes "It's been more than a year since the bold announcement from IBM that they planned on dumping Windows for Linux throughout the company. InfoWorld is reporting that not all is well with IBM's desktop Linux push. What went wrong?"

r3lody ((Raymond Lodato) writes "Java was developed to be a cross-platform language. In other words, it shouldn't matter what processor or operating system you used, just the language itself. Write Once, Run Anywhere is the slogan, and an admirable ideal to attempt to reach. So when I first saw the title of the book Java Application Development on Linux, I expected to find descriptions of some idiosyncrasies in the Linux environment that affected the Run Anywhere part of the equation. What I got was a lot more." Read on for the rest of Lodato's review.

Leslie Fletcher writes "This is the UK's premier event for Linux system and network administrators. Earlybird registration now extended to 31 January; for other details see the website."

barryman_5000 writes "Timothy Miller has written plenty of drivers for the open source effort and now kerneltrap has an interview with him on his newest effort for an open graphic card. He talks about his background, struggle with secretive 3D vendors and more."

A reader writes:"According to this week's Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, Gentoo is planning a port to Sun's partially-announced OpenSolaris. Something interesting to look out for, or just more hype from a developer often criticized even by Gentoo people for not looking before he leaps?"