ssbljk writes "Czech Post is the second largest employer in the Czech Republic with nearly 3,400 post offices and 40,000 employees. The company delivers nearly a billion letters and receives more than 100 million postal orders each year. Czech Post relies on APOST, a customized system used by 20,000 employees for all postal operations. APOST had been running on a range of operating systems including DOS and Microsoft Windows NT, but reached a point where running in a proprietary environment was proving too costly. With a disparate environment across 3,400 locations, Czech Post was experiencing increased administration costs, as well as downtime and security issues. In just 10 months, Czech Post installed the new SUSE LINUX-based APOST system on 4,000 servers at 3,400 post offices across the country, as well as at 12,000 client terminals used by 20,000 employees. The company now has a centralized infrastructure with support for remote monitoring that will significantly reduce administration costs. "

kforeman (aka Kevin Foreman, GM of Helix RealNetworks, Inc.) writes "As part of the free RealPlayer 10 for Linux, Real has paid Thomson for a legal MP3 playback license and then includes it at no cost as part of the newly released RealPlayer 10. As I speak to people, many are under the false impression that MP3 playback patent and royalty rights are free, since there are open source implementations of MP3 playback available. Not true. Nonetheless, we are glad to do our part of making the Linux desktop a first class citizen by legally providing MP3 playback to users via our new RealPlayer."

linuxbeta writes "Ubuntu Linux is getting ready for their next release of their ultra-popular desktop distribution. Their third milestone was recently released, but you don't have to download it to try it out. Head over to these fresh Ubuntu Linux 5.04 Array 3 (Hoary) screenshots to see what Ubuntu has up its sleeve." And if you haven't looked at OSDir for a while, you might be pleasantly surprised; the thumbnail views make it much easier to navigate.

phreakuencies writes "The ChangeLog in slackware-current got a distiguished update today on Jan 22: Patrick Volkerding updated us on his health condition stating he is not back in perfect shape but getting more medical tests and results. The initial phrase on the ChangeLog: 'I'm going to call this Slackware 10.1 beta 1, because we're at a state where things are relatively stable.' Read up here"

An anonymous reader writes "This article by a Ph.D student at Shanghai JiaoTong University (SJTU) Research Institute of Robotics describes an RTLinux-powered robot that placed fifth in the most recent RoboCup competition. The robot has two color cameras for visual sensing along with a laser range finder (LRF) for goalkeeper location, and a wireless LAN allows communication among the robots on SJTU's team. The robot's embedded operating system is Red Hat Linux enhanced with the RTLinuxPro real-time extension."

Georg Tobin writes "LinuxWorld open source editor Kevin Bedell conducts a very interesting interview with Michael Stutz, author of the new Linux Cookbook, 2nd Edition, on the language of the Linux command line, cookbooks, economics, and what applications you absolutely need Windows for."

An anonymous reader sends in a link to Businessweek talking about the business of Linux, and the increasing threat to Microsoft's operating system monopoly.

jgwong writes "Korg's newest keyboard, called OASYS, will run Linux with a propietary software developed by themselves. With a 10.4" touchscreen, CD burner and 16-track HD audio recording this looks pretty neat. No information about availability or price, though."

editingwhiz writes "Bob Mims of the Salt Lake Tribune has the scoop straight from the courthouse steps: 'A federal magistrate has handed a partial victory to Utah's SCO Group, ordering computer giant IBM to turn over more of its Linux operating system-related program codes. U.S. Magistrate Brooke Wells' ruling, released just minutes after Salt Lake City's federal courthouse closed Wednesday, came in the Lindon software company's contractual suit stemming from Big Blue's alleged distribution of Linux applications purportedly tainted with SCO's proprietary Unix code.' If at all possible, SCO's going to be even more insufferable now -- it has a glimmer of hope."

sebFlyte writes "Intel has lifted its ban on Linux-based laptops carrying its Centrino brand... It obviously makes very little difference technically what name is on the outside of the box, but does this represent a major philosophical shift for the chipmaker, or are they just leaping upon the nearest bandwagon in pursuit of a few extra bucks?"

Bill Kendrick writes "Sharp's hard-drive-packing SL-C3000 model Zaurus (available in the U.S. from Dynamism) has been reviewed by BargainPDA. They cover the differences between this one and earlier, similar models, and even go over some of the stuff interesting to Linux users."

kernel_dan writes "According to heise online, la Gendarmerie Nationale française (French police) will be changing all their computers to Linux. The numbers: 35,000 computers by the end of this month and 80,000 by the end of the summer will be running Linux."

An anonymous reader writes "HP has been demonstrating a Superdome server running the Stream and HPL benchmarks, which shows that the standard 2.6 Linux kernel scales to 64 processors. Compiling the kernel didn't scale quite so well, but that was because it involves intermittent serial processing by a single processor. The article also notes that HP's customers are increasingly using Linux for enterprise applications, and getting more interested in using it on the desktop..."

yootje writes "Although there were rumours saying that OSDL writes a version of the Linux kernel that doesn't infringe patents (an argument that was used by Microsoft), OSDL denies this: 'OSDL officials have said that the report was not accurate, and that while Beaverton is putting $1.2m into economic development around open source software, this is not connected to rewriting the Linux kernel.'"

AlanS2002 points out today's article from Iain Thomson on vnu.net, which says that "Linux systems are getting tougher for hackers to crack, security experts have reported today," summarizing "A study conducted by the Honeynet Project has found that it takes about 3 months before a unpatched Linux machine will be owned, compared with about 72 hours in the past. According to a report on the study default installations are now more secure with less services enabled by default, added to this is newer versions of software such as OpenSSH being more secure. Interestingly Solaris 8 and 9 did not fare so well."

Amadaeus writes "ATI released its much anticipated drivers for the X.Org 6.8 Window System today. ATI actually went one step further and updated its driver set for XFree86 as well. Those who had to hack and slash their way through the Fedora Core 3 install only to realize that VESA was the only way to get it working in init 5 will find this highly useful."

The LugRadio team writes "In the latest episode of LugRadio, the fortnightly Linux radio show, the team interview Mark Shuttleworth, head of the Ubuntu project. Mark talks about where Ubuntu is going, how (and whether) Canonical plan to make any money on the Ubuntu project, his role in the project, and (most importantly) why marketing isn't a good thing and what they're doing instead."

robyannetta writes "Paul Murphy from LinuxInsider.com asks the question What's the difference between Linux and System VR4? From the article: 'If there's a real bottom line here, the one thing I'm clear on is that I haven't found it yet, but the questions raised have been more interesting that the answers -- so more help would be welcomed.'"

robyannetta writes "Securing Linux Production Systems: A Practical Guide to Basic Security in Linux Production Environments is a practical step-by-step guide for securing Linux production systems. It shows how to meet basic security requirements for Linux systems that need to pass security audits. If you have been assigned to come up with a corporate Linux Security Standard, then you should definitely read on."

Gladiat0r writes "Nat Friedman blogged on Planet Gnome today that Novell has hired Tor Lillqvist (of Gimp for Windows fame) to help Fredrik Hedberg port Beagle to Windows, and after that his main task is to port Evolution to Windows."