Mark Brunelli writes "When Edward Haletky's friend asked him for help setting up a Linux desktop in the year 2000, they found only half of the Web applications needed. Since then, while researching his new book, Deploying Linux on the Desktop, Haletky has seen desktop Linux application availability and usability increase to the point where it's nearly ready for widespread corporate use. Yet Haletky does not think that Linux desktops will be widespread by 2007. In this interview, he explains why." Read on for a snippet from the interview. I know my Linux desktop (several, actually) has served well enough for "corporate use" for the past several years.

Rob writes "Computer Business Review is reporting that in order to help nudge Linux and open source software further into the enterprise, a vice president at Hewlett-Packard Co yesterday called on rivals IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc to invalidate their open-source software licenses in favor of a free licensing model. During his keynote at the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco yesterday, HP's vice president of open source and NonStop Enterprise Martin Fink commended the Open Source Initiative on setting up new rules to limit the growth of open-source licenses." From the article: "He asked IBM to deprecate its open-source license and instead put it under the General Public License, the most popular license for free software that gives users the freedom run the program for any purpose, to study how it works, to modify and improve it and distribute copies. In contrast, an open-source license, like IBM's, is copyrighted. Fink also called on Sun Microsystems to deprecate its Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), which applies to OpenSolaris, GlassFish and JWSDP, and to re-license Solaris 10 under the General Public License, which drew the crowd's applause."

gentoo1337 writes "Eben Moglen of the FSF speaks out in this ZDNet article, noting that GPL v3 may be publicly drafted in early 2006, and in force one year later. The process is very sensitive (noting concerns of forking in the Linux world), but Eben Moglen is optimistic: 'When it's all over, people are going to say, "All that talking for just that much change?" [...] We will do no harm. If we think (some change) may have any unintended consequences, we will not recommend making it.' Controversies aside, there is some good news -- Richard Stallman aims to 'lower barriers that today prevent the mixing of software covered by the GPL and other licenses.' The earlier Slashdot discussion contains complementary info about the intentions of FSF."

safeness writes "Gentoo 2005.1 was released yesterday. Included in its release is an additional experimental LiveCD with the long awaited graphical installer. Now there's one less reason for your friends to switch to Gentoo! Get it here!" And darthcamaro writes "Hard to tell from the change log what's new ... but this story on internetnews.com notes new installation hardware support and WiFi."

mrdaveb writes "The UKUUG's Linux 2005 technical conference took place at Swansea, Wales at the end of last week. The conference featured a variety of geek-tastic tutorials including advanced shell techniques using Zsh and a talk on Vim features. Other topics included a presentation about LUGRadio by one of the show's presenters and a talk about UnionFS and how it can be used in Live CDs.
A summary of the first day of the conference is available here. Follow the related links for more on the conference."

PCM2 writes "InfoWorld this week is running a ten-page guide to building your business entirely with OSS. The guide highlights OSS alternatives for many enterprise applications categories such as CRM, ERP, content management, and so on. It's not exhaustive, but where it skips the obvious categories like databases and Web servers it includes some others that you might not expect."

Anonymous Coward writes "Finally the site OpenSUSE.org is up and includes some beta downloads. The stable version can be expected around September 2005. Looks like there are some differences between Novell's SUSE and Redhat's Fedora mentioned in the FAQ."

Random BedHead Ed writes "Groklaw has some interesting new information online. In an entry today, PJ has posted the Deposition of Erik W. Hughes (PDF), a SCO employee. Hughes' 2004 testimony reveals that the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) of UnixWare somehow used kernel code. Exactly how it was used is not clear. UnixWare was released under a proprietary license, but the General Public License under which Linux is distributed requires derivative works to use the same license. As PJ says, it's "now apparent why SCO tried to say the GPL is unconstitutional" back in 2003."

swsuehr writes "Performance Tuning for Linux Servers provides information and resources for Linux administrators looking for a guide to the background, options, and commands available for enhancing the performance of a Linux server." Clear enough -- but read on for Suering's review of the book to see if it might help you at that task.

ir0b0t asks: "I'm a lawyer in a solo divorce practice in Missoula, Montana. I have migrated my office to OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird but want to do more Open Source, yet I have issues that come up nearly every day. The problems I encounter are often unique to running a small law practice. Coders sometimes give me blank looks when I describe what I need. Other lawyers tend to automatically use proprietary solutions and show little interest in Open Source alternatives. I want to eventually use only Open Source code in my office. I am willing to do my homework. Are there others like me out there? Is there a Linux Users Group or other online forum for professionals like me who want more Open Source solutions for our work? Thanks."

Mark Brunelli, News Editor writes "Tim Witham, CTO of Open Source Development Labs and a featured speaker at LinuxWorld, says the next Linux kernel will feature improved input/output and virtualization capabilities. Said Witham: 'Enabling virtualization is a big win [for Linux 2.6] as it allows IT shops to start their development cycles for a technology they will be looking at deploying within the next year or so. There has been lots of good work done with regard to system scalability, memory management, disk I/O, process and thread scalability. Also, work done for availability, like a greatly improved multi-path I/O [were victories].'"

canfirman writes "Well, it seems Darl is changing tactics as he's now published an open letter proclaiming the benefits of UNIX over any other operating system. However, most of his letter involves comparing SCO Unix to Linux from not only a business acceptance point of view, but from a technical point of view, too. Darl throws in a bunch of stats in there, too: 'In a study conducted only seven months ago they found that overall, the most vulnerable operating system for manual hacker attacks was Linux, accounting for 65.64% of all hacker breaches reported.' I'd love for somebody who has more technical knowledge than me to look at his points and see if what he says is true or not -- assuming anything coming out of Darl's mouth is true."

Rob writes "The bi-annual LinuxWorld trade show is under way this week in San Francisco, and once again the major platform makers are swearing their fealty to Linux and trying to figure out any angle they can to use Linux as a lever to wrest sales away from their competition and money out of their customer bases. The Linux market has largely proven itself (even if it is still dwarfed by Windows and Unix), and now the major server makers are getting down to the brass tacks of marketing as well as broadening and deepening their support of Linux on their platforms." Also FYI, I will be attending the Slashdot BOF session on Wednesday and answering questions. I'm hoping to be able to show people a good demo of Slashdot in CSS!

Bill Hilf, Microsoft's Linux Lab Manager, got his answers to your questions back to us in time to publish them just before the San Francisco LinuxWorld, where he is speaking. Before you ask: Yes, Microsoft PR had a look at his answers before he sent them. So if you have any follow-up questions for Mr. Hilf, please post them below and I'll try to ask at least a few of them in person at LinuxWorld.

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "As Linux enters the mainstream, adopters 'are demanding many features found on commercial software, including a large variety of add-on application programs and management tools that are easy to use,' the Wall Street Journal reports. 'How quickly open-source programs can narrow the gap with commercial software is a hotly debated topic in the computer industry. The transition may determine whether the technology will continue its momentum, or stall in the face of tougher competition at the heart of corporate computer networks.' Eric Singleton, chief information officer at retailer Tommy Hilfiger Corp., which recently switched its e-commerce site 'Tommy.com' from Linux to Microsoft software, calls Linux 'a great product,' but adds, 'it's got to get the final tier of reliability and predictability that I'm going to bet a multi-billion dollar corporation's future on.'"

TractorJector writes "It is no secret that the competition for global domination in the operating system market has moved from the desktop to the living room couch. The Olive Symphony, a Linux-powered hi-fi wi-fi stereo hub, stands a decent chance for a prime position before the living room throne."

paRcat asks: "My company isn't huge, and up until now has done well enough hosting all of our websites/email/etc. We've done all of this over one T1, but recently added another circuit for that rare instance of a fibercut. So since then I have been researching different options for configuring the existing Linux firewall (debian+iptables) to allow using the second circuit for load-balancing and failover. The issues I'm running into mostly have to do with recompiling the kernel using certain patches and creating semi-elaborate routes. Faced with these options, I'm wondering if there are any open source firewall projects out there that will behave happily with the above scenario. Do any free projects actually give this level of connectivity without being overly difficult in the configuration? I've gone the compile-your-own kernel route in the past, but now I'd just like to drop in a premade solution. A configurable live-CD would be perfect."

GuitarNeophyte writes "According to an article at PC Magazine, Indiana School systems may soon be purchasing around 300,000 Linpire desktop computers. Linspire, via its Education Program has a straight $500-per-school (not per-seat) cost, providing an incredibly-alluring price incentive for this to happen." From the article: "Many schools across the state have already had the chance to try out desktop Linux, and everyone seems excited to get this program going...This groundbreaking initiative makes it possible for schools to afford computers for every student, something that makes a huge impact on their overall educations."

amountlad writes "In addition to other activities like FOSCON happening outside of the "official" OSCON this week in Portland, Oregon, N4N.org is running a story and photos of the OSU/OTBC/POSSE party Thursday night. From Linus and IBM's Dan Frye to the OSU's Open Source Lab director and Open Technology Business Center founder LaVonne Reimer - Bar 71 was hopping as the N4N coverage details in word and images. The event was a joint effort by local OSS organizations POSSE (Portland OSS Entrepreneurs), the OTBC (Open Technology Business Center) and Oregon State University's OSL (Open Source Lab.)"

vd writes "Given most comments on Slashdot, it would appear that anyone with even a slight knowledge of computers hates Microsoft. An article on CoolTechZone, though, argues that not everyone should dismiss Microsoft outright. According to Varun Dubey, Linux is over-rated, Macs aren't worthy and Windows deserves respect and some love. From the article: 'What has Microsoft given us? It has given us Windows, sure, it was buggy earlier and a lot of things didn't work like they were supposed to (plug and play springs to mind) but it was a pioneering effort. No one was even close to the ease of use that Windows offered. Sure, Mac OS was a lot prettier but then it cost the moon and the stars along with both your arms and legs.'"