JigSaw writes "OSNews published an interview with Havoc Pennington, the head manager of Red Hat's Desktop department, also known for his freedesktop.org initiative and his very active/leading role in Gnome. Havoc discusses the internal changes on Red Hat, the future of the desktop version of Red Hat Linux, the XFree86 fork Xoutert, GTK+ and Gnome while he characteristically says regarding Linux eating UNIX's marketshare: '...nails are firmly in the UNIX coffin, and it's just a matter of time.'"

sweede asks: "I have a dedicated server that seems to reboot more often than it should. In Windows 2000/XP (maybe NT4.0?), if your computer or server crashes it will leave an event message in the Event Viewer for you to review on what went wrong. Is it possible to do something similar in Linux? Where a power outage or an unexpected kernel panic will leave a message in /var/log/event (or whatever) Searching Google for 'kernel trapping' doesn't give me a whole lot of info on the subject."

5p1urge asks: "I really love the Mono and DotGNU projects. As someone who's worked in Java for for over 5 years, I welcome C# and it's buddies to the OpenSource world. However, here's question: as far as I can tell, only the C# spec and System.* assemblies were submitted to ECMA and therefore made officially public. What happens when MS decides that, Linux -is- going to steal valuable income-generating business, and therefore it should use it's newly acquired patents to sue? I'd appreciate comments from IT lawyers / solicitors and individuals with experience in this area, as well as from the wider community. I'm asking this question because I want to code in mono / DotGnu but I'm cautious because I wonder if MS can take it away from us?"

Richard asks: "I am interested in starting some home automation projects. The only requirement is that it needs to be controllable via my Linux based system. A Google search for ' "home automation" linux ' returns more than 35,000 hits, including some good ones like this one, which just show how MUCH is out there. Are there any recommendations for a good controller with a serial or USB connection to the computer? What about power switches and sensors? Do I want a system that sends control signals over my house's power lines or RF? Any good software recommendations? As a first project I thought a simple controllable power switch would be fun: Then I could ssh to my home system, use the power switch to turn on a computer controlled radio (Ten-Tec RX-320) and use Speak Freely to send back the audio to my remote location. (This works now except that I don't want to leave the radio on all the time)."

locarecords.com writes "The Economist has an excellent article about Microsoft attempting to undermine the Open Source and Free Software movements. Particularly interesting are the issues relating to proprietary software and government and how other countries are mandating free software in government software projects."

An anonymous reader writes "This whitepaper describes how engineers at IBM's Pervasive Computing Advanced Technology Laboratory created a Linux-based, intelligent, remote control system for a model airplane as a way to showcase gateway server technology. The onboard computer controls various navigational equipment and interfaces to a wireless access point and PDA. The user can control the plane through handheld wireless technology. A 3-dimensional virtual flight environment tracks the plane's flight and provides a gps-based autopilot function. The environment is based on LandSAT maps and gives the user a virtual view of the flight from the cockpit of the plane, which can be augmented by real-time updates from an onboard camera. The article briefly introduces "gateway server" concepts, describes the embedded hardware and software architecture, explains how the IBM developers implemented the control systems, and includes lots of cool photos."

MadFarmAnimalz writes "Science Magazine's reporting on the results of the NSF's Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge and the first prize in the Illustrations category has been claimed by the Innolab 3D File Manager, which was developed on linux. Apparently this involves arranging data in a ferris wheel type structure." The data is arranged by its relationship with its content, rather than by its physical position on a hard drive or its file system.

ubiquitin writes "While KNOPPIX has been around for some time, the GNOPPIX project has only recently made its first release. The main difference is that it lets you boot into the GNOME desktop environment. Usually forks are more trouble than they're worth, but given the limits of what you can compress onto a single CD, separate projects makes sense to me. Hopefully more widespread recognition will also bring about a few more mirrors."

thedarb writes "Mandrake has decided to sell ads to be seen during installation, web browsing and in screen savers. This all comes in their upcoming 9.2 release. Seven G's and you could put your face in their installer." Update: 09/12 18:07 GMT by M : Mandrake has a page about the ads.

grugruto asks: "A lot of open source solutions are available to scale web sites with clusters but what about databases? I can't afford an Oracle RAC license but can I have something more reliable and fault tolerant than my single Postgres box? I have seen this recent article that looks promising for open source solutions. Do anyone have experiences with clusters of MySQL , Postgres-R, C-JDBC or other solutions? How does it compare to commercial products?"

Anonymous guy who can't remember his login sent in a story from the Globe And Mail that says "During August, 67 per cent of all successful and verifiable digital attacks against on-line servers targeted Linux, followed by Microsoft Windows at 23.2 per cent. A total of 12,892 Linux on-line servers running e-business and information sites were successfully breached in that month, followed by 4,626 Windows servers."

kerneljacabo writes "In what is yet another testament to the flexibility of the Gentoo platform, it has been ported to the PS2. It is still in the early stages but more information can be found here."

Tony Bybell writes "For the old school RPGamers, the 1980s Bard's Tale style of role playing is being unofficially resurrected as Bard's Legacy: Devil Whiskey. Check out the FAQ: a Linux port will be available immediately and they'll be releasing the code under an Open Source license after 50,000 copies of the full game have been sold." There's also a new downloadable demo available in both Windows and Linux flavors.

brakk writes "From this article at Infoworld, Linus responds to SCO's open letter in a manner reminiscent of patting a child on the head." chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireable.

An anonymous reader writes "This whitepaper at LinuxDevices.com includes benchmarks comparing the real-time performance of the vers. 2.4 and 2.6 linux kernels, based on LynuxWorks' BlueCat Linux 5.0 beta. The graphs compare the results for average and worst-case measurements of both interrupt response and task switch performance for the two kernels, running on a 1GHz Pentium III under relatively heavy load. Check it out -- there's an enormous improvement. The article also includes a rundown of other features of the new kernel that seem likely to be welcomed by embedded developers."

chendo writes "Gnome 2.4 will be released today. Here is the link to the article on Ars Technica. GNOME 2.4 is the result of quite a bit of work toward complying with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), which mainly focus on user interface consistency and predictability. This release has also undergone some general polish, and it can finally be said that the GNOME 2 platform has achieved maturity with this release. The Epiphany web browser, a major new component of GNOME, also makes its debut with this release. (From Footnotes)"

SiliconEntity writes "A new project from Dartmouth College demonstrates significant advances in combining Linux with TCPA. The software turns a Linux PC into a 'virtual secure coprocessor', which is able to check that none of its software is compromised and even (in a future version) prove its integrity to a remote system. Full GPL source code is available for the 2.4 kernel. This work is separate from the earlier IBM research which also combined Linux with TCPA, with the new project apparently more complete and with a road map towards a very functional Linux based trusted computing system. This could be an important technology for Linux to challenge Microsoft as it pushes forward with NGSCB (aka Palladium)."

Durin_Deathless writes "According to a thread on the Gentoo/PPC forums, some Gentoo users have installed Gentoo on their new G5s without any problems whatsoever. Benchmarks are extraordinary: compiling kde on a G5 running at half speed takes 15 minutes, while it takes one hour on the fastest P4 available. Gentoo/PowerPC lead, Pieter Van den Abeele, reported that the machine currently runs at half speed due to fan controlling hardware not yet supported. The Gentoo team will post benchmarks, and will update installation instructions as soon as possible. There is some question as to what exactly was compiled, as the times seem impossibly fast even on the P4."

An anonymous reader writes "Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently announced the 2.6.0-test5 Linux kernel, bringing the release of a stable 2.6 one step closer. KernelTrap quickly followed by posting a guide that walks bleeding-edge Linux fans through the process of upgrading from 2.6.0-test4 to 2.6.0-test5, using a tiny 706 KB patch."

An anonymous reader writes "LynuxWork's BlueCat Linux 5.0, based on a 2.6-series Linux kernel, is now available for public beta testing, with a projected final release date set for November. LynuxWorks claims this to be the first public availability of embedded Linux based on the new kernel. Key new features include: improved kernel preemption; 0(1) scheduler; improved POSIX threading support; Interested participants in BlueCat 5.0 beta program may apply at www.lynuxworks.com."