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The non-profit tuXlab program, which provides including tuXlab GNU/Linux desktops and other open-source software to South Africa high schools, integrated 10 more schools into its wireless network on Feb. 9. The project reportedly has now connected tuXlabs in 50 schools near Cape Town.

For the uninitiated, creating Debian packages is a mysterious process that looks much harder than it really is. To make it a little less mysterious, let's take a look at two methods of building Debian packages: using standard Debian packaging tools and the CheckInstall utility.

Announcing the third version of his syslets subsystem patches, Ingo Molnar noted that he has implemented many fundamental changes to the code including the introduction of threadlets, "'threadlets' are basically the user-space equivalent of syslets: small functions of execution that the kernel attempts to execute without scheduling. If the threadlet blocks, the kernel creates a real thread from it, and execution continues in that thread. The 'head' context (the context that never blocks) returns to the original function that called the threadlet." As threadlets are only moved into a separate thread context if they block, Ingo refers to them as 'optional threads'. He also describes them as 'on-demand parallelism', "user-space does not have to worry about setting up, sizing and feeding a thread pool - the kernel will execute the workload in a single-threaded manner as long as it makes sense, but once the context blocks, a parallel context is created. So parallelism inside applications is utilized in a natural way."

When Mark Alperin went looking to replace his aging ERP system in 2006, he found himself in the same place as many CIOs of midsize companies -- not feeling terribly sought after by software vendors who prioritize large enterprise accounts, and facing few choices. Alperin serves as COO with CIO responsibilities for Vertex Distribution, a manufacturer and distributor of rivets, screws and other fasteners. He wasn't happy with the two main packages for his industry, from Activant Solutions and Microsoft (neither of which he was using, nor did he want to use.)

Etherboot is an open source project that gets little public notice, but is essential to almost any other open source project that relies on thin clients or network booting. Here's a lightly edited log of an IRC conversation with Etherboot project leader Marty Connor and primary Etherboot developer Michael Brown.

The South African Cabinet today announced that it had approved a free and open source strategy and that government would migrate its current software to free and open source software.

Security service provider iDefense has reported that a design flaw in user authentication on the web interface of Trend Micro's ServerProtect for Linux allows attackers to switch off the virus scanner on the server or change its settings. The integrated server listens in on TCP port 14942 by default and is protected by a user-configured password.

Our first entry is written by no other than our Tanker Bob. While everyone is on the hot trail of Windows Vista launch, Tanker Bob took another path: moving from Windows to Linux. Follow the link below to Tanker Bob's The Vista Out My Windows.

This weekend, the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting will be held at the Université Libre in Brussels, Belgium. FOSDEM, being one of the biggest European Free Software events usually attracts several thousand people each year. The schedule for the KDE devroom is now published. Highlights this year include talks about the semantic desktop, a workshop on educational software and naturally an overview of the status of KDE 4. For the first time we are running a series of cross desktop talks together with Gnome where you can hear how desktop search engine Strigi works. KDE and friends also make appearances in the Lightening Talks track with topics including CMake, OpenWengo and Amarok. If you are planning to visit FOSDEM, add your name to the FOSDEM 2007 Wiki Page.

Version 1.0 of NTFS-3g, a free NTFS driver for Linux, has been released. Project manager Szabolcs Szakacsits has declared the driver ready for productive use after the release candidate published two weeks ago was not changed. Szakacsits is also the author of the ntfsresize tool used in a number of partitioning tools and Linux installation routines.

When Yahoo! released its latest Web-based application, Pipes, earlier this month it was deemed everything from "innovative" to a "milestone in the history of the Internet." According to Pasha Sadri, Technical Yahoo!, Pipes Development, overall feedback on the new tool has been positive, but he says he's particularly interested in what the programming community has to say about it.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named Frances E Allen as the recipient of the 2006 A M Turing Award.

Linux distributor TerraSoft is accepting pre-orders for Sony Playstation3 gaming devices pre-installed with Linux, alongside the PS3's native gaming OS. Additionally, TerraSoft, IBM, RapidMind, and Vivendi game publisher High Moon Studios are offering seminars to help game developers exploit the PS3's Cell architecture.

In celebration of International Mother Tongue Language Day on February 21, the Department of Communications and the CSIR announced that they would fund Translate.org.za to update and maintain South African language translations of OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird for three years.

In this fourth episode of a series that pits Microsoft's new Vista OS against SimplyMEPIS Linux, DesktopLinux.com columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols compares the operating systems' bundled games, browsers, and instant communications applications.

OpenMedSpelis a open source medical spelling word list that is released under a GPL license. OpenMedSpel was derived from the word lists complied for MedSpel, a shareware medical spelling tool for Microsoft Word. OpenMedSpel is currently available in USA English. Other languages and localizations may be released in the future. OpenMedSpel has been adapted to work on the Mozilla Tunderbird email client and the OpenOffice.org office suite. OpenMedSpel can be adapted for many other programs as well. OpenMedSpel can be downloaded from http://www.e-medtools.com/openmedspel.html

Freedom is just another word for $7,000

Red Hat has launched its first annual Red Hat Innovation Awards to be presented at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego May 9-11. The Red Hat Innovation Awards recognize Red Hat users, customers and partners who stand out for improving processes, overcoming technology challenges and enhancing their bottom line through Red Hat and JBoss solutions. The awards provide an opportunity for Red Hat community members to share their individual stories and receive recognition for innovative and exemplary uses of Red Hat technologies.

Kingfisher Group has migrated its 240 Castorama and Brico Dépôt stores on the continent to Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Oracle databases.

When a project with the size and scope of KDE gets to be as big as it is, sometimes changing a decision established almost a decade earlier is very difficult. KDE has relied on autotools to build most of the project since its inception, but for the last year, KDE 4 has been building with CMake, a newer build system that is rapidly becoming a heavyweight contender in the world of buildsystems. Read on for more...