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The Joint Information Systems Committee has issued a briefing paper to all colleges and universities in the UK to raise awareness of the issue of open source software. With almost every further and higher education institution in the UK making using of open source software, and with the European Commission and the UK Government giving their support to its development and deployment, it has become a central issue for institutional management of IT systems and services in education.

A free application environment for Linux-based handheld and mobile devices may support lots more devices in the future, including Linux mobile phones. The GPE (GPE palmtop environment) project is planning a "device abstraction" layer aimed at simplying new device ports, according to maintainer Florian Boor.

Vyatta, an open-source router company, released the first beta version of its WAN router code this week, with the goal of becoming the networking equivalent of Linux or Firefox, but taking aim at Cisco instead of Microsoft.

Technologic Systems will ship a new ARM9- and FPGA-powered SBC (single-board computer) next quarter, targeting high-security applications such as gaming, building security, and network gateways/firewalls. The TS-7300 offers several intriguing security features, and is available now as a development kit featuring a bootable Debian SD card.

The South African Revenue Service has issued an RFP (request for proposal) for Linux desktops to help the agency do its tax collecting, according to a report in the country's Mail & Guardian Online. A successful proof of concept could result in 14,000 Windows XP SP2 desktops migrating to Linux, the article said.

The Kompany announced Thursday that its Linux-friendly Mindawn online music player is now bundled in Mandriva Linux 2006. This marks the first time a digital media download client has been bundled with any Linux distro, The Kompany president Shawn Gordon told DesktopLinux.com.

Panda Software has announced a freely downloadable beta release of its anti-malware, firewall, and intrusion-prevention software for Linux. DesktopSecure also addresses buffer overflow and privilege escalation vulnerabilities, the company said.

Friday, February 24, 2006: The upcoming version of Red Hat's Fedora Linux will include software that will give a tough time to the rival Novell project, but it will use a less intrusive mechanism, advocates say.

Hewlett-Packard has announced that it will certify Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4 as the preferred operating system for its new AdvancedTCA Blade Server, which the company debuted last week at the 3GSM World Congress.

Microsoft doesn't seem to worry about missing a software release. They also haven't worried about paying off private anti-trust cases. But when they start posting exhibits on their web site in defense of legal rulings, then doubt, suspicion, or lack of confidence in future outcomes have become a preoccupation in Redmond.

On Digg.com

In the early days of the Internet, a software appliance would have been called a "turnkey solution," so the idea is nothing new. But that hasn't stopped a number of Linux vendors from pushing their software appliance wares into the market, a move that is seeing some early signs of success. Brian Proffitt reports on one vendor that may have big things to offer SMBs

The Participatory Culture Foundation on Wednesday announced the launch of Democracy, an open source Internet TV system that the group describes as “TiVo for Web video.” The free player is available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows operating systems.

Democracy combines Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, BitTorrent and video blog technology to enable users to subscribe to and watch full screen video on their computer. A built-in channel guide helps you navigate the content that is available.

Songbird, an open source media player built on the Firefox browser engine, debuted this month to fanfare from a few blogs heralding it as the second coming of digital music. For a while on the day of its release it was such a popular download that it caused the servers hosting it to crash.

Eight companies have been selected to be the suppliers of open source software and support services to the government and the State IT Agency over the next three years. News of the winners of potentially South Africa's most lucrative open source deal ends months of nail-biting for tenderers involved.

Microsoft lately has been challenging Linux's suitability for older hardware, so it seems like a good time to look at Linux distributions that can run on older machines. I took six distributions for a test run on an old machine, and also tried software that turns old hardware into a thin client. The bottom line: Linux is still quite suitable for older hardware. It might not turn your aging PC into a powerhouse, but it will extend its lifespan considerably.

I'm only an amateur systems administrator, but I'm also terribly lazy, so I do have a few good tools in my toolbox.

Nowadays, the Web is all about being social. We have social bookmarking, social photo sharing, and social browsing. So it's not a big surprise that now we can also enjoy social music listening, courtesy of Last.fm.

We look at a new Java language feature and what you can do with it.

Puppy Linux founder and chief developer Barry Kauler Wednesday released version 1.0.8 of the Puppy Linux mini distribution. The live-CD iso file, named puppy-1.0.8-mozilla.iso, weighs in at 61.5 MB. Also available is a multisession iso called puppy-multisession-1.0.8-mozilla.iso.

Okay, I confess. I have been beating IBM up about how it needs to buy a BI player in order to be a credible player in the space, and it turns out that I got it all wrong, because IBM already owns a BI player. Well, actually, a bit of a BI vendor. A very small bit. And I’m not actually sure the information management people actually know about it but, nevertheless, IBM owns a very small (less than 5 per cent) portion of a New Zealand based company called Descisys.