jonoxer writes "A little while ago members of the Debian project voted to make changes to the Social Contract. As previously reported on Slashdot, the end result looked likely to be a delay in the release of Sarge, the next Stable edition of Debian, until 2005. But on Saturday Debian developers voted to postpone the changes until after Sarge releases, effectively affirming that the changes need to be made but making a pragmatic decision to not let the next release be delayed as a result. The official voting page doesn't show the result yet, but it's been semi-officially announced."

Dozix007 writes "NewsForge carries an interesting article on how spoiled Linux users are. It sites examples such as the availability of wide ranging software packages that Microsoft can't hope to provide. Microsoft has to be careful about what kind of application software it ships with Windows. Microsoft reps sometimes point to Linux distributions and ask why they can get away with shipping stacks and stacks of applications without getting in trouble. The answer to that one, of course, is that the Linux distributions give you a choice. You aren't locked into one particular application. Most Linux distributions include several choices for most program classifications; even single-CD distros usually include several Web browsers and email clients."

LoganGD writes "A reseach group from UFPR university in Brazil, C3SL has managed to make one Linux box run four terminals at the same time. That means four mice, keyboards, displays and users with just one CPU. The way they managed to do that can be found at the FourHead project webpage. The fact that one computer science laboratory can suport up to 60 users whit only 15 PCs is really attractive for low-resource groups and countries."

jg21 writes "Java is 'incredibly heavily used' in the Linux community, according to Sun's James Gosling, one of Java's co-creators. Gosling was debating Stanford's Lawrence Lessig, Apache co-founder Brian Behlendorf, IBM's Rod Smith, and others at JavaOne this week about the possible merits of open-sourcing Java vs the market's demand for continuing compatibility. But Behlendorf seemed not to agree. So who was right, how many Slashdotters are also Java users? Is "incredibly heavily used" an overstatement by Gosling, who after all helped create the language and therefore might be biased?"

Supermathie writes "NVidia has finally released drivers for their chipsets and the 2.6 kernel that support 4K stacks. That means compatability with Fedora Core 2 kernels, people! View the README, visit their driver page, or download the package."

Skapare writes "O'Reilly Network's LinuxDevCenter has a great article summarizing the indemnification possibilities for businesses considering switching to (or staying with) Linux. Author Tom Adelstein covers the business risk mitigation aspects of using Linux today, and details available indemnification offerings from Novell, HP, Red Hat, and OSRM. So why not print a copy and send it to your company CEO."

underpar writes "This zdnet article covering Microsoft's Tech Ed conference quotes one of the speakers, Mark Russinovich, as saying that Linux is becoming more and more like Windows. He cites many examples of where Linux 'copies' Windows and other operating systems. He says the only current difference is 'how windowing is handled.'"

JimLynch writes "One of the more common questions experienced Linux users get asked by those considering migrating from Windows to Linux is, "Will my Windows applications run under Linux?" Thanks to the folks at CodeWeavers, the answer to that is yes--for some applications, anyway." And Dan Dole writes "Linuxlookup.com staff member Rich reviews Cedega (WineX 4.0), give it a 20/20 score & Editors Choice Award. "The release of Transgaming's newest version of WineX, renamed Cedega, was met with considerable enthusiasm and interest in the Linux community last week. So much so that their server was inaccessible the day of release. Cedega is claimed to be much improved, offering the ability to play recent games released for Windows "seamlessly and transparently" under Linux. They provided me with a copy, and I was curious to see if it lived up to the hype.""

An anonymous reader writes "Automating software testing allows you to run the same tests over a period of time, ensuring that you are really comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. In this article, Linux Test Project team members share their methodology and rationale, as well as the scripts and tools they use to stress-test the Linux kernel."

megmag writes "A really cool project using a Linux P4 machine for automatic parking of a Volvo S60 was presented last week. Take a look at the video. That's how your parking problem should be solved. It is a final-year student project within the mechanical engineering department at Linköping University, Sweden."

share_it asks: "On my Win PC I used a lot of encryption: I had encrypted small files for personal stuff, encrypted virtual disks for programs, music, video, etc. I used PGPdisk and mounted 3 big virtual disks (for a total of 170 gigs) on startup with just one single passphrase and those 'disks' were even quite fast. I have now switched to GNU-Linux for most of my interests, but sometimes I have to use Windows and I want my data to be encrypted and accessible from both OSes The only software that I found which can mount the same encrypted disk on both platforms is BestCript, but from Linux I can't store file with long names. Is there a better way to share encrypted data between when I dual-boot?"

Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is running a review of glabels. It's still in beta status, but it's ready for prime time now. It knows hundreds of predefined label formats and allows you to design your own templates for custom work. Barcodes, images, just about anything but MP3 tracks can be printed on them. glabels is destined to become one of the most popular native apps for Linux." If you need harder-core barcode support, the excellent kbarcode would probably make a good complement. (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.)

An anonymous reader submits "The Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) celebrated its one-year anniversary today by releasing its first Specification and Reference Implementation. The Specification is a 67-page document aimed at guiding system developers interested in creating or extending individual technologies in Linux for use in consumer electronic (CE) devices. The Reference Implementation is a fully patched source tree supporting nine target boards. CELF is an industry consortium founded by Sony and Matsushita, and chartered with steering the development of a version of Linux for use in embedded CE products."

PSUdaemon writes "Over at Kernel Trap they have an announcment that Red Hat has released GFS under the GPL and offer it through RHN. This could potentially be a very substantial offering from Red Hat."

leifbk writes "Wired has a very interesting feature article on how Darl McBride and his sidekick Mike Anderer rose to fame. Some particularly juicy parts are about Anderer: 'He's supercompetitive,' said one. 'If he knows you'll faint at the sight of blood, he'll cut himself just to watch you pass out.'" A very thorough retelling of the legend that is SCO.

martin-k writes "NewsForge has a glowing review about PlanMaker for Linux, a new spreadsheet for Linux that is much more compatible with Microsoft Excel than the competition and speedier, too. PlanMaker has Excel-compatible charting and AutoShapes and reads and writes any Excel file you throw at it. Here is a chart comparing Excel, OpenOffice.org, and PlanMaker." Yes, Virginia, NewsForge is also part of OSDN, like Slashdot.

sciguy125 asks: "I switched to Linux a few months ago and the biggest problem that I've had is with my printer. I've got a Canon S520 and Red Hat 9. It prints painfully slow. If I want to print word documents that are more than 5 pages, it's faster to reboot into Windows and print from there. I've scoured the Internet and found that many people are having this problem, but nobody has a satisfactory solution. The most common suggestion is to get a faster computer, thinking that GhostScript is running slow. I'm fairly sure that isn't my problem because the processor is only at about half load when printing. I'm not exactly sure how wide spread this problem is, but I do know that there is at least a decent sized handful of people struggling with it. At first, I was considering dropping Linux because this printing problem is a serious issue with me, but now I just leave a good chunk of my printing until after 2am." Has anyone run into the problem before? What could make a print job spool at unusually slow rates to the printer?

Greedo writes "The Toronto Star is reporting that 'Toronto will become home this weekend to what's being touted as the first retail computer store devoted exclusively to Linux-based products.' The store, Sub500.com, will sell PCs and laptop computers based on Linspire. Marc and David Silverman had been selling Linux products over the Web for 18 months. They also operate a car wash and figured they could use surplus office space at that location to open a Linux store."

Nereus writes "The BBC News is reporting on the newfound popularity of Linux in Iraq. The article discusses how the Iraqi Linux User Group believe Linux will aid the Iraqi people in the rebuilding of their country, and the benefits of open source in Iraq."

linuxtag-reporter writes "The first day of LinuxTag, Europe's biggest Free Software event (expecting 25,000 visitors) already has one big highlight. It seems that Fabian Franz from the Knoppix Project hacked up a 'FreeNX Server' based on NoMachine's NX technology (poor NoMachine might lose business now). Fabian Franz presented a first preview of the 'GPL Edition' in a live demo together with Kurt Pfeifle. The demo showed sessions going from Germany to Italy just based on a slow WLAN connectivity (shared with hundreds of visitors). A connection lost due to bad network conditions was easily re-connected to, and a deliberately suspended session was revitalized too -- it was just like 'screen' with a GUI! A report on the official LinuxTag webpage says FreeNX will be publically released for the first time as part of the upcoming Knoppix-3.6 release. The Kalyxo project is building and hosting Debian packages of FreeNX and NX/GPL for everyone to use."