r3lody (Ray Lodato) writes "Just because Linux is under the GPL, some people believe that it's pretty standardized. Actually, each distro has its own little additions and, consequently, quirks. Writing an application to work reliably under all variations is not a slam-dunk. The Linux Standard Base Specification seeks to provide the common ground that all Linux apps should adhere to, and therefore make reasonably sure that they will work as advertised. Building Applications with the Linux Standard Base is a reference manual for application developers to make sure their programs will work across the Linux map." Read on for the rest of Lodato's review.

al@opensourcebrowser.com pastes "For a theoretically free operating system, Linux is -- and will continue to be -- a cash cow, a research firm said Wednesday as it predicted the OS will bring in more than $35 billion in revenues by 2008. Framingham, Mass.-based IDC said that overall revenue for servers, desktops, and packaged software running on Linux will reach $35.7 billion in the next four years."

werjman asks: "I'm interested in switching completely to Linux but the only thing holding me back is the gaming. What I really want to know is what distro, graphical environment, Window Manager, and so forth are low on the system resources and play games great (and by games, I mean 3D accelerated memory hogs). Does anyone out there actually use Linux as a gaming platform?"

rayk_sland writes "Users of the Rosegarden Sequencer project will be gratified to see it featured in O'Reilly's Linux DevCenter web magazine. I am a devoted fan of this program, which allows the user to sequence music using classical music notation, and has many other sequencer features I haven't even properly fathomed (read the article.) The Rosegarden project has recently released a 'pre-1' beta. Almost time for those party streamers..."

jg21 writes "Exasperated after spending 5 hours removing spyware and trojans from his wife's Windows PC, sysadmin Chris Spencer has written an impassioned Open Letter to a Digital World. In the letter he reviews the 'elephants in the closet' - i.e. unfixed bugs and glaring security vulnerabilities - that Microsoft in his view hopes ordinary users will ignore, including some discussed in previous Slashdot stories."

An anonymous reader writes "According to DesktopLinux.com, a new music download service was launched recently by theKompany.com that, unlike iTunes and Napster, targets Linux desktops. Mindawn is claimed to provide CD-quality song files and 'virtually no' digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, offer full previews of the entire songs, and provide downloads in a variety of formats." There's also an interview with the founder.

James F. Hitchens asks: "I used to run Red-Hat Enterprise vs.3, just recently I switched to fedora core 3. The reason for my change was because I could not get my ATi Radeon 9600 All in Wonder to work. I hoped that Fedora was a little more advanced in the area of 3D acceleration (so I could play Unreal Tournament 2004 and Tux-racer). Yet again it was not to be, ne worke pas. Can anyone tell me what I need to do to make this work? The drivers that ATi supplies on their website are, in short, crap."

almondjoy writes "I was project leader for publication of this recent IBM Redbook, available for free download here: Linux Client Migration Cookbook: A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop Linux. At this point, I'm gathering input for what we could improve on, and what additional topics should be covered in a second version of the book. I realize this is a broad topic to cover in a rapidly changing environment. And because these books are developed by IBM there are some content limitations. Nonetheless, in the next version we want to continue making the book as useful as possible for anyone considering a migration to Linux on the desktop."

Paul Kucher writes "On December 17th, 2003, Linux 2.6 was released by Linus Torvalds, saying 'The beaver is out of detox.' This was a reference to the last pre-release of the 2.6 kernel, which was called Beaver in Detox. Although a stable release, the 2.6 kernel has added many new features in the past year due to the new development model. It will be interesting to see what else is in store for this kernel, and I imagine it will be years before it is in maintenance mode."

Junks Jerzey writes "The long awaited long suspected-to-be-vaporware BlitzMax game programming language has been released for Mac OS X. Linux and Windows versions are set to follow "soon," making this a truly cross-platform, OpenGL-based game development system. Don't be scared by the BASIC monicker: this is a modular programming language that lets you get under the hood if you want, but also includes OOP support and higher-level features. But of course C++ game programmers will still shake their heads in a puzzled fashion, ignoring all the amazing games written by hobbyist programmers. If nothing else, write a cross-platform OpenGL demo in ten lines of code!"

Steve Emms writes "We've published today a review of Xandros Desktop OS Version 3.0 Deluxe which might interest your readers. Xandros Desktop OS Version 3.0 is billed as 'an intuitive graphical environment that works right out of the box and offers unrivaled compatibility with Microsoft Windows'. So it's pretty clear what the market of the product is - all the millions of Windows users that are fed up with an unstable operating system, want something for email and web browsing, and be able to create, edit and send the boss their Word, Excel and Visio files."

generationxyu writes "D. J. Bernstein, better known as DJB, has announced the discovery of 44 security holes that were found by students in his course MCS 494: Unix Security Holes this fall at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Vulnerable programs of note include: CUPS, NASM, mpg123, MPlayer, xine-lib, and numerous others. Copies of the notification emails are here. The homework for the course was to find and exploit 10 previously undiscovered security holes in currently deployed Unix software. In a class of 25, 44 security holes seems a bit low. Most of the class failed. I was credited with bsb2ppm (actually libbsb) and jpegtoavi. After 300 hours of work and an A average on the exams, I expect to fail the course."

An anonymous reader writes "Key findings from a newly completed IDC market study project that the overall revenue for desktops, servers, and packaged software running on Linux will exceed $35 billion by 2008. Additionally, IDC forecasts that while Linux remains a minority player on desktop PCs, Linux penetration in that realm will reach $10B annual revenues, on 17 million units shipped globally, by 2008. A summary of the study is available as a free download from the OSDL."

zigam writes "The time needed to boot desktop Linux systems is becoming an issue. That's why I recently took the challenge posted by Red Hat's Owen Taylor on the Fedora developers list and came up with a tool for visualization of the boot process. It collects performance data during the boot up and then renders an SVG or PNG performance chart. It immediately helped Red Hat developers solve some issues and I have since received boot charts from other GNU/Linux developers as well. Solaris kernel developers reported success in improving their boot process too." Update: 12/15 20:04 GMT by T : Sorry, someone decided your time was worth wasting; no more mirrored bootchart.

A not-so anonymous Anonymous Coward puts this tough issue up for discussion: "There seem some more determined efforts underway currently in some corners of the KDE project to port substantial parts of the software stack to the MS Windows platform. These efforts are now met by fierce resistance on the part of some of their core developers. Aaron J. Seigo summarizes his reasoning in his blog: 'If the applications people want are available on Windows, they will tend to stick with Windows...by porting software to Windows, we eliminate the majority of the competitive advantage of Free Software desktops in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of consumers while Microsoft has all the rope they need to shut the door once again on us ... Free Software desktop applications on Windows represent a no-win situation for Open Source, but Open Source desktops on Free Software operating systems do.'" (Read more below.)

sushant_bhatia_progr writes "Wired has an article stating that according to a four-year analysis of the 5.7 million lines of Linux source code conducted by five Stanford University computer science researchers, the Linux kernel programming code is better and more secure than the programming code of most proprietary software. The report, set to be released on Tuesday, states that the 2.6 Linux production kernel, shipped with software from Red Hat, Novell and other major Linux software vendors, contains 985 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code, well below the industry average for commercial enterprise software. Windows XP, by comparison, contains about 40 million lines of code, with new bugs found on a frequent basis. Commercial software typically has 20 to 30 bugs for every 1,000 lines of code, according to Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab Sustainable Computing Consortium. This would be equivalent to 114,000 to 171,000 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code."

An anonymous reader writes "An updated Linux vs Windows TCO study has found that a 250-seat company can end up saving 36 percent if it were to equip its users with the open source operating system and applications that run on it."

linuxbeta writes "The latest major release of Mandrakelinux, 10.1 Official, is now available for public download! Empower yourself with all the new and stable 10.1 features. Mandrakelinux 10.1 comes with a great selection of software which we have covered at OSDir in our wide selection of screenshots of this distribution. Our screenshots include Installation, Desktop, Taskbars, Menus, and Configuration on the default KDE. We've also grabbed some shots of the GNOME, WindowMaker, and IceWM desktops for your viewing pleasure. The Mandrakelinux Move 2.0 Live CD was also recently released and we grabbed some shots of it for you."

An anonymous reader writes "Apple enthusiasts and Linux geeks allied and the result is the announcement of a set of patches (still in test stage) that allows iMac G5 owners to (at least) boot Linux on their toys."

An anonymous reader writes "Despite a 2002 unanimous vote by the Dutch parliament to prefer open standards and open source, exclusive negotiations with Microsoft were started. MPs have started asking questions already, but will add some more now that a Dutch journalist discovered that the deal will cripple the open source ambitions. The deal not only covers desktop software, but lets Microsoft deliver server software and support as well. MPs are outraged, and the EU may investigate why no mandatory public bid was started. In an open letter to the government, public organizations and open source companies like Novell raise hell. How can you ever fight bureaucrats?"