An anonymous reader writes "Technology Review has a great article discussing how pretty, user-friendly Linux desktops, cheap machines sold at stores such as Wal-Mart, and the growth of useful free software like Open Office have made Linux a 'key business risk' for our friends in Redmond. The story notes that Linux's market share for desktop computers has already surpassed Apple's. Says the Open Source Initiative's Eric Raymond, 'The sinister plan for world domination is right on schedule.' All right!"

prostoalex writes "ZDNet UK says that, while SCO Group's legal department took a timeout from generating new lawsuits, their Linux license prices might be increased. 'Companies that license now may be able to do so cheaper than if they do so later,' [Blake] Stowell said. In the upcoming financials call, SCO expects to announce 6-figure revenue from its SCOSource division."

Saeed al-Sahaf writes "According to Groklaw and the German publication Heise (it's in German, of course) Munich's mayor Christian Ude has held a press conference, in which he said that the bidding process for the switch from Windows to Linux will go forward as originally planned, despite patent issues. InfoWorld (in English), quotes Bernd Plank, a spokesman for Munich town hall, saying that he expected that the administration would take a maximum of 'two to three weeks' to decide whether the EU's Directive on software patents could affect the city's plan to switch to Linux, and that would be no 'dramatic setback.'" We reported this earlier as well, but now that it's making the rounds again in English, more of us can read it without resorting to Babelfish.

Bruce Perens writes "Slashdot has often featured attempts at improvement upon the QWERTY keyboard. Here's a one-handed USB keyboard that you can buy for $25 online, or a bit more at the CompUSA. There's one catch: someone will have to design a keying pattern and hack up software for it. It's a task just crying out for an Open Source project." Bruce has also included on the linked page code with which to read the output from the device.

HulkProtector1 writes "The latest version of KDE beta 3.3 has been released. This version has already received a lot of feedback and has been deemed stable enough for a public release candidate. The KDE team requests that all testers try and break this release as soon as possible, as the bug reports are invaluable to the developers. Please note that binary packages will not be available for this version. Then source code can be downloaded from download.kde.org (or alternately use the excellent Konstruct build tool). For a list of new features skim over the KDE 3.3 Feature Plan."

jg21 writes "'Open source developers have the opportunity to influence technology that is being used by companies and do it on a global scale in a way that cannot occur with any other type of software,' contends Bill Claybrook, writing in the current issue of LinuxWorld. The article is a historical overview of the open source revolution, starting in the 80s with the GNU Project, BSD, and TCP/IP and then moving into the 90s with Red Hat, StarOffice, and coming right into the 21st century with the Ximian Desktop and Sun's Linux-based Sun Java Desktop System."

chromatic writes "After the hoopla about OSRM's study of patent risks in the Linux kernel, I talked to Dan Ravicher, the patent attorney and free software afficionado who conducted the study. Contrary to my initial reaction, I've come to believe that the study is actually very valuable. Linux and Patent Risks on the O'Reilly Network explains why."

UnderScan writes "Linux.com is running an article on Linux kernel sound subsystems, OSS & ALSA, and their APIs. Insightful commentary from both users and the project's developers can be found at OSNews.com comments section."

Lil' Bobby Gortician writes "This new MSNBC article talks about Microsoft's developing strategy to deal with Linux. They are actually getting some of their sales people certified as Linux experts, and say 1/10th of their test servers now run Linux. My favorite quote? "There's no set architecture in Linux. All roads lead to madness"."

starwindsurfer writes "US space agency Nasa is to get a massive supercomputing boost to help get its shuttle missions back in action after the 2003 shuttle disaster. Project Columbia, a collaboration with two technology giants, will mean Nasa's computing power will be ramped up by 10 times to do complex simulations."

legrimpeur writes "Anandtech has a nice performance comparison under Linux (AMD64) between the recently introduced 3.6GHz EM64T Xeon processor and an Athlon 64 3500+. It is disappointing to see how the Athlon gets trounced in FPU intensive benchmarks. No memory-bound benchmarks (where the Athlon is supposed to have an edge) are presented, though." Update: 08/09 23:34 GMT by T : As the Inquirer reports, many Anandtech readers take issue with the comparison.

rekt writes "The Debian crew has just announced the release of debian-installer RC1. You can find versions of it for 11 different architectures at the d-i page. This is one of the most flexible, modular installer architectures out there. As we near the release of sarge (debian 3.1) next month, it's important that we find and work out any bugs in the installer. Grab a copy and give it a shot!"

Quirk writes "Wired News has a blurb celebrating the 10th birthday of the Beowulf cluster. Attendees recalled the initial fear and loathing the Beowulf project had to overcome. The Beowulf project takes its name from an epic poem penned circa 1000 A.D."

Theanswriz42 writes "MandrakeSoft has announced the release of Mandrake Linux 10.1 Beta1 which is available from one of the many mirrors or from bittorrent. xorg is now the standard and there are many other changes from the previous version of Mandrake Linux. Screenshots are available here."

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices reports on the world's first Linux computer to fit inside a CompactFlash card. The 'Compact Flash Computer' (CFC) can be mixed and matched with third-party CF cards to instantly create minuscule Linux systems based entirely on CF cards. A wide variety of third-party CF peripheral cards can be used with the CFC, including RS232/485, Ethernet, Bluetooth, USB, 802.11, GSM, GPRS, GPS, and more. A combination power supply / bus expander module on a separate CF card, as well as a tiny 8-slot CF card backplane, are available as options." An anonymous reader adds "The card is based on a Freescale MPC5272 system-on-chip processor and contains 32MB of SDRAM and 8MB of Flash memory, and it comes with a uClinux based operating system and GNU development/debug tools."

Socrate76 writes "Linux Terminal Server Project just announced the latest 4.1 version. Among new features: local CD-ROM and floppy support using supermount and samba, sound support with esd and nasd by default, new kernel based on 2.4.26. And a question for other ./-ers: is it possible to watch movies (mplayer | xine) using LTSP over a 100-BaseT Ethernet? Is that possible, or must the movie player be run locally?"

ChaosTangent writes "BBC News reports that NASA is to boost its computing by 10 times with a new supercomputer that is Linux based. The articles claims it to be the "biggest" Linux based supercomputer with over 500 terabytes of storage and 1000 gigabytes of memory per Altix node. Dubbed 'Project Columbia', the new supercomputer will allow NASA to model complex scenarios (such as gravity simulations) more accurately than before." We had another story about this a week or so ago.

Doc Ruby writes "LinuxJournal has an intro to uCLinux by David McCullough, one of the project developers. Specific techniques are discussed for Linux programming on this version, that runs on devices without the MMU that the Linux VM usually requires. Developers can make Linux apps run on uCLinux devices, including PDAs like a Palm IIIx, routers, DVD players, and even a FPGA."

Krafty Koder writes "Over at Newsforge (Part of OSTG, Slashdot's Parent) there's an interesting article that attempts to dispells the myth that Linux isn't ready for the desktop or that Windows still beats Linux. Three myths are explored - that Linux is harder to use, difficult to install and that there's not enough apps ."

joestar writes "Just announced on Mandrakelinux.com: 'At last something to make your summer hotter, far better than all these linux unaware suntanned chicks and chaps you would like to get along with on the beach. Forget them and go back home, full up your fridge with soya drinks (or your favorite one, but remember that fast assimilated sugar shorten your life expectancy). It is time to test your new air conditionner limits, switching on all the computers sitting arround to test this new Mandrakelinux 10.1 beta! '. Software packages include: Linux 2.6.8 rc2, Glibc 2.3.3, Xorg 6.7.0, KDE 3.2.3 and GNOME 2.6.0."