JofCoRe writes "Just got a message from the redhat watch list today, announcing the availability of a new beta, called "Severn". Some snippets from the announcement: What's its development status? "It doesn't seem too horrendously in flux. Difficult at this moment to make a specific diagnosis." Among other things, SEVERN has: a new graphical boot, GCC 3.3, an updated 2.4.21 kernel, updated Evolution and Mozilla, More information about the beta can be found at rhl.redhat.com. And the Release notes are found here. Looks like they have it currently labeled as v9.0.93." Update: 07/21 15:11 GMT by H : It's 3.2.3 GCC, not 3.3, as I had above.

An anonymous reader writes "Remember that story about the city of Munich choosing Linux to power 14,000 desktop computers? One aspect of this story that most people don't know about is that up to 80 percent of those Linux desktops will be equipped with VMWare, a virtual machine emulator, under which they will run Windows and Windows applications. That's right, folks: The majority of those 'Linux desktops' will be used to run ... Windows." This Gartner report from early June seems to be the one mentioned in the article, though I'm not sure exactly where Thurrott gets the 80% figure.

ksheff writes "According to this story, IBM is planning on introducing low-end SMP servers and deskside machines based on the PPC970. The machines would be able to run Linux and AIX. A 4-way machine is expected to cost less than $3500! IBM expects a 20x increase in the number of PPC Linux servers by 2006."

An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat, the leading American distributor of Linux, is abandoning the retail channel, the company is expected to announce Monday, says this story in Linux and Main. Non-Red Hat developers will be given a greater role in deciding what's in upcoming Red Hat distributions, too."

akorvemaker writes "OSNews is reporting about an article at InfoWorld that SCO's new Linux licensing program 'will allow users of the open-source operating system to run Linux without fear of litigation.'" This seems to be either the best business decision ever, or a nail in their coffin. One would think they'd wait before charging a license fee over what some would call shaky ground,

Jorkapp writes "Microsoft has officially moved Linux up to the Number 2 Risk to the company (With Economic Environment at No. 1). Bill Gates has taken the threat very seriously, and has identified Linux and non-commercial software as 'out there and very pervasive.' In response, Microsoft has dropped the price of Windows CE and opened the embedded OS to developers. This will not only allow developers to view and modify CE, but also distribute software incorporated to the modified code."

wolfbane01 asks: "I spend some time giving tech suggestions to a medium sized business firm (~100 employees) with a large amount of demand placed on their file server. Their current server is a dual Pentium 500 with RAID array and they are looking to upgrade it. The dilemma is the current server OS is running SCO OpenServer 5.0.5, and their new raid array requires 5.0.7. Their programmers have demonstrated that a Linux box can process records much faster, but are still worried about the investment and potential problems that switching OSes would entail. I have already mentioned the cheaper price and the community availability when problems come up, but what other reasons have Slashdot readers come up with for a switch? What arguments am I forgetting that make Linux more attractive then SCO? Should I advise against switching to Linux and advocate them sticking to SCO? Is SCO going to even be in business long enough to make the upgrades product cycle?"

An anonymous reader writes "There's nothing quite like command-line tools for handling large batches of tasks, and image manipulations are no exception. Web developers and administrators will appreciate the ability to handle large numbers of files easily, either at the command line or in scripts. This article presents the ImageMagick suite, a Linux toolkit for sizing, rotating, converting, and otherwise manipulating images, in a huge number of formats, whether one or a hundred at a time."

Sir_Stinksalot writes "DistroWatch is reporting that Slackware is 10. 'Yes folks, it is exactly 10 years today since the release of Slackware Linux 1.0, complete with a brand new Linux kernel 0.99pl11 Alpha, XFree86 1.3 and even a PS/2 mouse support!' Let's all say happy birthday to Slackware."

palfreman writes "The Linux Beer Hike is less than a month away. This year it is in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, following last years success in County Clare, Ireland, and the 2001 event in Bouillon, Belgium. This year the dates are Saturday, August 9 to Sunday, August 17. There is also registration site and a members mailinglist. I'm driving from England, a 2400 mile round trip!"

An anonymous reader submits: "In an interview with CRN, Linus Torvalds says he's confident there won't be any IP problems discovered in Linux. In fact, Torvalds, says he was extra careful with issues like the IBM Read Copy Update code."

McShazbot writes "Graphics.com has this article about the release of Scribus 1.0 (homepage, mirror) desktop publishing software. Check out some screenshots. If it can even marginally compete with the industry leader, this is a big deal -- I know a lot of people for whom Quark is the killer app that prevents them from moving to Linux, and most of them are tired of paying a grand for the privilege of using it."

An anonymous reader writes "USA Today is running a piece about the lengths which Microsoft went to in order not to lose the government of Munich's account to a Linux-based proposal from SuSE. Interesting to see how these types of contracts are structured, and just what Microsoft is willing to give up to prevent losing to Linux."

Skeme writes "Have you heard of Plan 9 or Reiser4 but don't know much about them? Are you curious about the improvements free software is making to its filesystems in general? Read my summary of the current developments in the filesystem: namely, what improvements we can expect (a lot), and what Linux and the BSDs can do to improve on the filesystem."

LinuxDesktop.it writes "According to this article on pro-linux.de, LinuxTag 2003 was a success: 19500 visitors, up +40% from last year and the number of journalists covering the event increased twofold -- according to pro-linux thanks to the strong signals that the city of Munich switching 14k PCs to Linux sent through Germany. Exhibitors seemed quite satisfied too because they did not expect that the trade show generated that many business contacts since many reputed it as a more community event rather than a 'where .com meets .org' event."

gaurab writes "For the first time, 11 people were trained in Linux in Kabul. This training was supported by UNDP as a broader program to build capacity in use of computer technologies. The press release and some info is available at UNDP Afghanistan Website. It was reported on NewsForge today, and was picked up by the Washington Post few days ago. Some discussion also happend on the South Asia Mailing List."

securitas writes "eWEEK has two related articles on the growth of open source software. The first article is about the growth of desktop Linux, featuring Lotus and the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) founder Mitch Kapor, who says (among other things) that call centers will be where the next wave of growth for desktop Linux happens and that 10 percent of global desktops will be Linux in a few years. He bases his statements on a report by Eazel and GNOME Foundation co-founder Bart Decrem entitled 'Desktop Linux Technology and Market Overview' (PDF) mentioned last week. The second story is about open source software growth in the government sector where government agencies like the U.S. Census Bureau have embraced OS software for projects like the State and County QuickFacts site. Based on Perl, Apache, MySQL and Linux, the site gets 200,000 page views a day."

xose quotes Linus from the kernel list: "the naming should be familiar - it's the same deal as with 2.4.0. One difference is that while 2.4.0 took about 7 months from the pre1 to the final release, I hope (and believe) that we have fewer issues facing us in the current 2.6.0. But very obviously there are going to be a few test-releases before the real thing. The point of the test versions is to make more people realize that they need testing and get some straggling developers realizing that it's too late to worry about the next big feature. I'm hoping that Linux vendors will start offering the test kernels as installation alternatives, and do things like make upgrade internal machines, so that when the real 2.6.0 does happen, we're all set." You all know what to do ;) Update: 07/14 17:49 GMT by S : OverNeith writes "Joe Pranevich has done it again! He's written another summary document on what to expect in the new and upcoming 2.6 Kernel!"

pauly asks: "We are a small (5 man) specialized software company which is merging with a larger (200+ employee) company. Basically they are buying us to add a whole new product line and have us be their development skunkworks. What recommendations would Slashdot readers have before, during, or shortly after the acquisition? This post is not a solicitation of legal advice: we have a very nice contract drawn up which is agreeable to both parties and which we will be signing shortly. We are looking for practical precautions or recommendations. If you have gone through the same type of deal, what would you do the same, or differently?"

jjaimon writes "There is a document on different package formats used in Linux/Unix systems. Worth reading." Another reader sends in this guide to creating Debian packages which seems apropos here.