Sam Lowry writes "In a recent post at his livejournal, Ulrich Drepper criticizes the LSB standard and urges the distributions to drop it." It's an interesting piece; Ulrich raises some good points.

[vmlinuz] writes "O'Reillynet is running an article about 'Opening the potential of OpenOffice.org' which explores how anyone can contribute to argubly one of the most important Open Source projects. The article also discusses the importance of a shorter release cycle."

Bryce writes "Looks like the main kernel.org machine has moved to the Oregon State University Open Source Lab. "Last night, Peter Anvin took master.kernel.org (hera) down and handed it off to his friend, Javier. This morning, Javier flew it up here to Corvallis in his Cessna Skylane. This is the first time the OSL has had a server hand-delivered by plane, and so we were giddy as schoolgirls." Kees Cook, the senior IT guy at OSDL helped them get it installed and configured."

An anonymous reader writes "Today sees the opening of the Official GP2X Site where you can see the new console from Gamepark.com, who last brought you the GP32 a fantastic console for homebrew developers. This console is a major step up with Dual 200Mhz cpus and is basically a Portable Linux handheld that can easily do ports like Quake, Doom and Emulators like Mame. Its Open Source SDK gives all amateur and commercial Developers the ablity to release software on a brand new console like the old Amiga/Commodore 64 days. More screenshots of the GP2X can be found at GP2x news."

An anonymous reader writes "According to Internetnews.com The Race to Linux project was announced Wednesday at the recent Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. The challenge: port an existing ASP.NET application to Linux using any cross-platform tool of choice, including Mono, Grasshopper and PHP. (Mainsoft offers tools that let Visual Studio users build applications that run natively in the Unix, J2EE and Linux environments.) Yaacov Cohen, CEO of Mainsoft stated: 'Linux is too big and ubiquitous to ignore.'"

WindozeSux writes "Dell Laptops(Latitude 110L) are now shipping with Mandriva Linux pre-installed. Mandriva says this represents a milestone to make Linux more available to consumers. From the article:"This product shows the world that Mandriva is today ready for the consumer market. We've been developing products for the corporate and enthusiast markets for years. Addressing the needs of the consumer market is a different challenge, because it is all the more difficult, as you don't have a system admin or professional technician at home", said François Bancilhon, Mandriva CEO"

swillden asks: "I need to package up some commercial Linux software for multiple distributions (Red Hat Enterprise 3 and 4, Fedora, Novell Desktop, SuSE Professional and Enterprise, Mandrake and Debian), and I'm wondering what tools others have found useful. The software is closed source and needs to be very easy to install. This has been an ongoing problem for commercial software on Linux for some time. Has there been any progress?"

comforteagle writes "Scott Moschella, from Attack of the Show!, set out to make The Gimp a little friendlier with a simple UI make-over, creating GimpShop. Despite an outcry from some developers, users have picked it up with passion. Howard Wen has interviewed Scott about why he did this. From the interview: 'I've always thought that GIMP was just as powerful as Photoshop. My way of proving it was to make GIMP work as close to Photoshop as I possibly could, given my limited programming experience.' As more Windows/Mac users discover powerful open source applications are they bound (slashdot disc.) to make more discoveries of this kind?" Update: 09/16 18:48 GMT by Z : Some users have pointed out this is basically an update to a previous discussion we've had. Link added for the sake of completeness.

UltimaGuy wrote to mention a DesktopLinux.com article discussing Indonesia's adoption of a Java Desktop System on Linux as a national OS. From the article: "This desktop software will be a major component of the new Indonesia Goes Open Source (IGOS) program that aims to help eliminate the "digital divide in the world's largest archipelago," the ministry and Sun Microsystems said in a joint announcement. The ministry said it will develop its own IGOS-branded software stack using JDS on Linux as the base platform. The agreement with Sun -- for an unspecified number of years -- has the goal of installing copies of the open source-based desktop across Indonesia, beginning with its government-affiliated offices, the ministry said."

daria42 writes "Linus Torvalds' bid to have the word 'Linux' trademarked in Australia has failed, with the local intellectual property regulator sending his lawyer a vitriolic letter deriding efforts to provide evidence the trademark application was legitimate. In the letter, the regulator points out that information from Wikipedia and Google used by the lawyer to support the trademark application is simply not effective in making the case for a trademark to be registered."

daria42 writes "It looks like the Debian Common Core Alliance announced a while ago is going to make good on its promises: the project has released its first code this week. The release consists of a base installation of Debian 3.1 with the Linux Standard Base and security updates attached. But the project also looks like it has attracted some criticism from within the Debian developer community - with a spoof Web site having already been set up to poke fun at the Alliance."

excelblue writes "Slackware Linux 10.2 has finally been released. This release comes with Linux 2.4.31, with 2.6.13 available in the testing packages and glibc 2.3.5. This time, they've decided to get up with times and switch to Firefox, Thunderbird, and subversion instead of using the Mozilla suite and cvs from the previous distros. Here are Torrents of ISO images."

An anonymous reader writes "An interview was recently conducted with Rickford Grant, the author of "Linux for Non-Geeks" and the new "Linux Made Easy". Grant is outspoken in his opinions and offers a number of unique views on topics as diverse as Windows Vista, desktop Linux, GNOME vs. KDE, and lots more. Part of the interview is spent talking about his new book but the bulk of the interview is a discussion of his views on pertinent topics and news. The author is a strong supporter of desktop Linux and has been getting quite a bit of attention for his views on the subject."

An anonymous reader writes "Panasonic has opened an embedded Linux incubator in Silicon Valley, where it hopes to host and collaborate with several Linux startups, in exchange for 'first right-of-refusal on up to 10 percent of the startup's next institutional funding round'. From the article: 'Panasonic uses other open sources OSes in addition to Linux, but Linux has become a top choice due to its cost-effectiveness and robust nature,' according to the Center's director. Panasonic is in the same corporate family as Matsushita, which is one of the founding members of the Consumer Electronics Linux Foundation (CELF)."

It doesn't come easy writes "According to the Register, Novell expects the cost of upgrading to Vista will encourage many companies to turn to Linux instead. From the article: 'Jack Messman, chief executive of networking software vendor Novell says that 2006 will see widespread adoption of Linux on the corporate desktop. According to Messman the catalyst will be the release of Microsoft Windows Vista and the high costs associated with upgrading. Obviously, if they're right Novell hopes that turn will be toward SUSE Linux.'" We touched on this issue late last month, as well.

Charli125 asks: "I have been a Windows administrator ever since I got into the tech industry. I have no working experience with any other OS except for those from Apple. I am currently working with a small company that has 1 server and around 15 workstations. I would like to faze out all of the Windows software, in order to avoid having to deal with viruses, save money, and learn how the other half lives. Since I have never so much as installed Linux, I am looking for resources or advice on how to get started, and how to plan the change over. Can anyone help me?"

wbglinks writes "An informative interview with Linux guru Alan Cox, with an emphasis on Linux and security. Alan will be the keynote speaker at EuroOSCON this October." From the article: "It is beginning to improve, but at the moment computer security is rather basic and mostly reactive. Systems fail absolutely rather than degrade. We are still in a world where an attack like the slammer worm combined with a PC BIOS eraser or disk locking tool could wipe out half the PCs exposed to the internet in a few hours. In a sense we are fortunate that most attackers want to control and use systems they attack rather than destroy them."

An anonymous reader writes "A Linux implementation delivering single-digit microsecond responsiveness on 64-bit dual-core AMD Opteron processors is being demonstrated at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston this week. From the article: "According to FSMLabs, an AMD Opteron 265 dual-core system running RTLinux can deliver guaranteed interrupt latencies of no more than five microseconds, with scheduling jitter of no more than eight microseconds, even with Linux under a heavy load." Heck, with numbers like that it seems like Linux could run circles around XP Pro for audio/video apps such as streaming, recording, and playback!"

wellington wrote to mention a ZDNet blurb about a Gartner group study. Gartner indicates that 'mainstream' use of open source in IT environments may be 5 years away. From the article: "Gartner's latest Linux 'hype cycle' report shows that open source is halfway to maturity but warns the biggest test will be whether it can demonstrate the necessary performance and security to function as a data centre server for mission-critical applications. Leading-edge businesses are generally still in the early stages of Linux deployments but Gartner expects increased commercialisation and improved storage and systems management for the operating system by the end of 2005, with Linux being used primarily for WebSphere and infrastructure applications on mainframes and web services on blades and racks."

mu22le writes "Andrea Arcangeli has created a new tool, 'klive', to automatically track the amount of testing that each kernel gets before release. According to Kernel Traffic "There was some discussion [on making it a kernel config option] that public perception might put this in the "spyware" category", but still the ability to track a kernel usage and reliability would be valuable to both developers and users."