ozy writes "With all the fuss about searching and Spotlight and WinFS, check out the Database File System a completely different interface for your files, implemented in KDE. There is actually a request for developers to join a project to implement this under GNOME and leave how we use the desktop today behind."

Torsten Rahn writes "The KDE Project is pleased to announce the successful completion of the KDE Community World Summit ("aKademy 2004") in Ludwigsburg (Germany) taking place from August 20th to 29th. With more than 230 KDE core developers, usability and accessibility experts, translators, editors and artists participating, the event is expected to have a huge and lasting impact on the next major releases of the leading Linux and Unix desktop environment. In addition, 270 visitors from the KDE user base and from other Free Software projects brought the total number of attendees to 500. The international participants, coming from 5 continents, took part in 65 talks, 10 full-day tutorials and numerous BoF-meetings over the course of 10 days. Thanks to this huge turnout and the numerous activities, the event evolved into the largest conference ever held that focused on a single open source desktop environment."

hesby writes "Anandtech has just published the first half of a two-part article on building a MythTV PVR that they will ultimately compare with Microsoft's Windows Media Center Edition on very similar hardware. As a result, they selected some components that the average user might not choose, just to keep things fair in the second part, where they pit the two PVRs head to head."

Freshly Exhumed writes "Warly has announced the availability of Mandrake Linux 10.1 RC1 via torrent or FTP for those who enjoy bug reporting. Key ingredients: kernel 2.6.8 with parts of 2.6.9, xorg 6.7.0, KDE 3.2.3, Gnome 2.6, Mozilla 1.7.2, glibc 2.3.3, and gcc 3.4.1, among other goodies found in over 1,800 packages. This announcement follows on the heels of the Mandrake & LaCie project known as GlobeTrotter, a USB hard drive-based Mandrake distribution portable to most of today's PCs."

An anonymous reader writes "In an interview on O'Reilly, The Scribus Team, who recently released Scribus 1.2 , reveal the first commercial adoptions of Scribus, GIMP, Inkscape, and Linux by commercial newspapers. Who said Linux could not make it in the print world ?"

GraWil writes "Famed graphics card maker and documented Linux supporter ATI has refreshed its proprietary Linux drivers (3.11.1) for the Radeon and FireGL series cards. Unfortunately, many of the previous comments still apply and it seems that ATI is not yet committed to supporting Linux well. The procedure for installing is now documented in a separate how-to but it seems that quite a few are stuck in an endless cycle of compiling kernels with/without DRI/AGPGART/RADEON/DBE (insert random module here). For those with strong enough feelings, ATI is seeking feedback on these drivers."

theodp writes "'In the Linux world, nobody stands behind patent claims,' warned Steve Ballmer, saying that Microsoft customers would be protected from the $550 million Eolas patent infringement judgment. 'I'm not trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt,' said the CEO of the company who earlier cried wolf about breaking IE in the wake of the Eolas judgment, prompting the W3C to go to bat for the software giant."

Olivier Van Acker asks: "Since I started working at my current job a year ago I've installed on average one (Gentoo) Linux machine a month. Included are developer desktop machines, development servers, router/firewall, web servers, video server, MPEG encoders, etc. (It's a platform for interactive television). Since I'm the only one who is able to maintain them I want to train two of my colleagues. I've got three days dedicated time, three computers to work with and they are both Linux/Open source newbies (A technician and a programmer). What should this crash course include, what is the best learning method and what resources are available online?"

LordPixie writes " As summarized over at Defense Tech, the U.S. Army is soon to be infected with the infamous OSS virus. They have chosen Linux as the operating system for the abysmally named 'System of Systems Common Operating Environment,' a part of Army's planned Future Combat Systems."

uniqueCondition points to a story on News.com, writing "With SCO's legal costs reaching $7.3 million in their most recent quarter, nearly half of the $15 million it has spent in the last five quarters, SCO can't afford this kind of litigation. They have therefore limited their payment to $31 million for the entire case and is giving their legal team a larger slice of any settlement SCO achieves. Under the current agreement, the firm's contingency payment is 20 percent of a settlement. Under the new agreement, that increases to a range of 20 to 33 percent." uniqueCondition links also to coverage at Techrepublic.com, InformationWeek and The Inquirer.

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at LinuxDevices.com, the latest market research data from Venture Development Corp. shows that Linux is now firmly in first place as the OS of choice for smart gadgets and embedded systems. VDC's latest data indicates that Linux now accounts for 15.5% of embedded projects, beating out Microsoft's WinCE (6%) and XPe (5%), and Wind River's VxWorks (10.3%)."

d3vi1 writes "Netline, the main developer of Open-Xchange, has just released the GPL licenced version to the masses. The product is mostly known by users because of SuSE's Open-Xchange Server, a product started from "comFire Groupware". Open-Xchange is a groupware suite with WebDAV interface (XML), LDAP, iCal and HTTP(S) support. An Evolution plugin is on the way."

Tim 'pez2001' Theede writes "vp-usb-lock is a Linux kernel driver and PAM module that utilizes the PC wireless USB lock and makes it possible to use it as authentication method for your Linux box. It is easy to install, but needs access to the sources of the kernel and PAM to build correctly. It has been tested under Fedora Core 2 with a custom made 2.6.7-1.494.2.2 kernel, but it should also work with other kernel versions and distributions. Of course it's GPL'ed! download it"

CathalMcCarthy writes "European Universities to launch CALIBRE an international initiative to develop Open Source research and foster its integration in European businesses."

deputydink writes "Recently the NHS licensed from Sun 5000 seats of its JDS system for tactical deployments within the health care service, adding that it deemed JDS a viable desktop alternative for certain types of user communities. The NHS has already deployed JDS in its back-office. This could be the high profile boost for JDS subscription services that Sun needs."

Scott Granneman writes "Looking to use that new Gmail account for something really innovative? How about combining it with a brand new filesystem for Linux? Then GmailFS might be the answer: 'GmailFS provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium. ... GmailFS supports most file operations such as read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename.'"

joestar writes "Mandrakesoft & LaCie have just launched "GlobeTrotter", a ultra-compact 40 GB bootable USB hard-drive pre-loaded with Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official. It may be plugged to any available PC with a USB 1 or USB 2 port, automatically recognizes the host-PC's hardware, and then is ready to use. Multiple uses can be imagined, from the office/internet workstation to the multimedia jukebox! The concept is quite similar to Mandrakemove, excepted that it's way more powerful than a USB-key based system! And for $219 it's a credible alternative to a laptop."

Martin writes "Angelo Ovidi from XFDeb project released the first unofficial deb kernel packages supporting Global File System (GFS recently open source from RedHat) on a 2.6.8.1 vanilla kernel and all the set of utilities for GFS clustering (GULM, CCS, etc). The kernel was patched using the most recent CVS stuff from RedHat and it seems stable. I have tested on some servers. It has GNBD integrated in a monolithic way and it's ok. You can find all the stuff at xfdeb.sourceforge.net." In particular, here are kernel packages and GFS related packages.

plimsoll writes "Hot on the heels of the original cash register running Linux, dumpster-diver Aaron Benoy has implemented his own GNU/Linux POS project with a twist: Ruins in ASCII, a late IBM 4694 removed from its case and reloaded with Linux to become a self-described 'video sculpture' showcasing 'an infinite loop of 180 distinct 7-second long video clips of various abandoned, ruined or otherwise vacant buildings and infrastructure' on its 9-inch paper white phosphor terminal display. Southern geeks can see it unveiled tonight at the Atlanta Underground Film Festival."

minus_273 writes "MSNBC is currently running a story on the front page reviewing the new HP Linux laptops. In a story titled 'H-P's first Linux laptop a winner', the article provides a brief look at the accomplishments and some of the shortcomings of the nx5000; a new inexpensive HP business laptop that comes with SUSE installed. The author seems extremely happy about how everything just works out of the box and mentions the significance of the product. Could HP+SUSE go the way of Apple+BSD and become an option for those that want friendly non-windows laptop? Releasing an easy to use Linux system is a good first step." We mentioned this laptop a few weeks ago.