An anonymous reader submits "An excellent rant^H^H^H^Harticle is up over at LinuxLaboratory.org, encouraging proprietary companies that make software for Windows to provide a full-featured equivalent for Linux. The argument being made that users aren't cheap skates, they will pay for good software. But many companies that port software to Linux will only ship stripped-down versions, leading to people not buying the software when they can buy the complete version for Windows, then the company not providing the software for Linux because it didnt sell. The argument is made that if the Linux version were equivalent to the Windows version, then people will buy it."

Johann asks: "Our LUG has been fortunate to hold meetings for the past two years in a corporate-sponsored basement auditorium. The sponsor pays for us to use this room, which seats around 50-60 comfortably. We normally fill the room. We have an offer to move to a meeting room in a Radisson hotel at a highly-reduced rate. This room has many advantages over our current 'free' one, such as better handicapped and after-hours access, internet connectivity, better temperature control, and room for more people. The only problem: the members likely will have to bear the costs of this room ourselves. So, my question to other LUGs: Are you paying for your meeting space? If so, by what means? Donations? Sponsors? Passing-the-Hat? How have the members taken to paying for space?"

An anonymous reader writes "With little fanfare, User Mode-Linux (UML) has been merged into Linus' BitKeeper tree. The merge followed a patch by UML author Jeff Dike, resynching UML with the 2.5.34 development kernel. From the UML homepage, User-Mode Linux provides you with a virtual machine that offers 'a safe, secure way of running Linux versions and Linux processes. Run buggy software, experiment with new Linux kernels or distributions, and poke around in the internals of Linux, all without risking your main Linux setup.'" There's more UML resources available at the community site.

An anonymous reader writes "This article at LinuxDevices.com takes a look at a new 'home media gateway' design that was unveiled today by Intel at the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, CA. The device is expected to be manufactured by multiple consumer electronics manufacturers in Asia, and will enable the distribution of PC digital media to TVs and stereos throughout the home. The gadget is based on one of Intel's new XScale processors running a customized version of Linux, provides support for JPEG, MP3, and WMA digital content, utilizes 802.11b wireless networking, and supports NTSC/PAL/S-video TV connections and AC-97 stereo connection. The home media adapter is a key component of Intel's 'Extended Wireless PC Initiative', which is part of Intel's greater Digital Home initiative."

Bill Kendrick writes "There's been an announcement on debian-devel-announce about a new subproject, DebianEdu, which "aims to make Debian the best distribution available for educational use." As a developer with some stuff in Debian Jr., I'm happy to see some focus on an honest-to-goodness education project!"

jukal writes "Open for Business's Timothy R. Butler talked with Mandrake co-founder Gaël Duval about the company's past, present, and future. Worth a read, clip: "GD: For one year, we had a so-called "World Class Management" team that left us in a very bad financial situation, and engaged the company in ventures (such as e-learning) that we should never have been involved with. But that's all part of our history now, so I'd prefer to not dwell too much on that. ""

An anonymous reader points out this article in the International Herald Tribune about corporate acceptance of computers running GNU/Linux, which includes this snippet: "Linux is already outpacing Macintosh on desktops: "Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst for International Data Corp., said Linux had a 3.9 percent share of desktops worldwide, outpacing Macintosh's 3.1 percent." The article does not specify from where Kuznetsky draws either figure, but can it be true that Linux systems currently outnumber Macintoshes?

An anonymous reader writes "When Eric S. Raymond tried to replace the Linux kernel's configuration system with "something better", he got booed off the stage. Now Roman Zippel is bravely having his own go at it. Here's an interview with Roman and a look at his new configuration system, aimed for inclusion into the 2.5 development kernel. Also, find some screenshots of his new graphical configuration frontend."

cant_get_a_good_nick writes "From this week's Apacheweek comes a link to a white paper discussing Total Cost of Ownership for Linux in the Enterprise. Some very good hard numbers here, although as always, YMMV. It shows that even with "expensive UNIX admins" having to switch over costs to a "new UNIX", admin costs are lower than for Windows or Solaris. Some great quotes too, I can see these plastered in posts for weeks to come. I wish they could have included FreeBSD in the survey, but all in all interesting."

mfago writes "A colleague of mine has written a great tutorial on how to use rsync to create automatic "snapshot-style" backups. Nothing is required except for a simple script, although it is thus not necessarily suitable for data-center applications. Please try to be gentle on his server: it is the $80 computer that he mentions in the tutorial. Perhaps try the Google cache." An excellent article answering a frequently asked question.

Jon wrote in with news that Libranet 2.7 has been released. I've never tried Libranet, but Debian 3.0 is a fine, up-to-date OS with the usual Debian installation (harder than necessary), so if Libranet offers that Debian goodness with a better installer it should be an excellent choice for both experienced and newbie users.

Ace905 asks: "I am a software developer looking to market my product, and after weeks of research and rejections I've come to a few conclusions that I hope are wrong; Software Publishers are looking almost exclusively for Game Software, To get big you have to already be big, and nobody comes to you even when you have a great product! I'm wondering if any other developers have similar experiences marketing their life's work? Are there any publishing companies that actively persue new developers? Where does a developer go to sell their cross-platform utility software? Your feedback is much appreciated!"

A user writes, "Just saw at penguinppc that Mac-On-Linux can now run Mac OS X. Nothing like having Mac OS X running on a VT to switch to and from." Cool, but ... why?

An anonymous reader writes "I found this story on UnixReview.com - vnunet has some commentary about UnitedLinux and it sounds like it's struggling." I dunno - I plan on still giving them the benefit of the doubt, and see what comes out. Heck, I might even try installing a machine with the "united distro" - but it's still an interesting pickle some of the primary members are in.

LordNimon writes "Over the past couple years, we've been hearing several Linux migration stories, but they have been mostly migration from proprietary Unix systems rather than from Windows. Well, this story on News.com indicates otherwise: of the migrations, 24% were from Unix, but 31% were from Windows. Sounds promising."

A reader writes: "Some folks from The Boston Consulting Group with OSDN have been working on creating a visual representation of the Linux Kernel. It's been put online, complete with instructions with how to read it, and how to make sense of the information." There's also some new code checked into the Free Code Graphing Project, which enabled this to project to come together (look at CVS) - let's see if we can get people to do it with things like *BSD, Apache and some of the other great projects out there. This is a continuation with the other work being done, like the OSS demographic work. (Note: Slashdot is part of OSDN.)

joecooler asks: "I work for an ASIC company in the verification group. We use VCS and Vera to write and run simulations, Clearcase for revision control, and LSF to manage our server farm. At my instigation my employer has begun to move to Linux PC's for our simulation server farm instead of the much more expensive and much slower Solaris Sun machines. Everything has been working well and everyone has been very pleased with the performance except for one 'small' problem - every two weeks or so we will suddenly see all jobs running on Linux machines crash. After much pain we have been able to isolate this to an issue with Clearcase returning files 'slowly' to the Linux machines, causing VCS compiles to die. Has anyone else had issues with Clearcase and Linux running on a PC? If so, how did you debug this and isolate the exact source of the problem? Is this solvable, or is it one of the mysteries of networking?"

freax writes "Today in the the xbox-linux mailinglist: I'm typing this into KMail using a USB keybaord (and a USB mouse) in front of the TV connected to the Xbox. ... and even StarOffice works quite fine. TuxRacer also runs (look at the new screenhots on the website), but only with one frame per second. Check out screenshots here."

upwardlyAndconstantly-Mobile asks: "I'm a systems engineer in the IT department of a bank. My wife is a PhD candidate looking to graduate in 4 years or so. Due to the nature of academia, she may need to move several times for post-docs and professor jobs once she gets her credentials. Her job opportunities may come from any number of cities or towns in the US or around the world. My current skill set ties me to only a handful of major cities, so I am trying to figure out the best path to prepare myself for being uprooted. Besides running something like Slashdot, what are the best tech jobs that are mobile? How many people have jobs that can actually be done from anywhere they can get email and web access? What's the best way to prepare for something like this? I have time to prepare, but what should I be doing? (I write this anonymously because I don't want my current employer reading it!)"

Sivar writes "Red Hat plans to enter the desktop business OS market, The Register reports. Red Hat says that the move is in response to growing frustration with Microsoft which has peaked since the introduction of Microsoft's new licensing scheme. The article states that the desktop offering is due next year and, surprisingly "...the company is considering subscription-based pricing.""