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Conservative release cycles and a more exhaustive test cycle make Red Hat Enterprise Linux a safer bet for the business community--they don't have to chase the release of the week. So how does the newest release of the RHEL line hold up? Bill von Hagen reviews.

Zend Technologies Inc. on Monday introduced Zend Studio 4.0, a new version of their PHP integrated development environment (IDE). Zend Studio runs on multiple operating systems including Mac OS X.

At the annual gathering this week at LinuxWorld Conference& Expo in Boston, top-tier vendors from the Linux Nation will roll out a raft of enterprise-class products and services. A few will lay out road maps for how they plan to kick their open source strategies up even higher into the enterprise.

Microsoft is still the dominant company in high-tech, the cynosure of all those things people love and hate about computing, the defining company of our time. It is huge, powerful and confident. But if you sniff the air, you can just make out the first hints of rot.

Recently we had the chance to test out Red Hat's new version of its popular Enterprise Linux product, which Red Hat is officially unveiling today. The results were somewhat disappointing, as RHEL4 offers few compelling reasons for current RHEL3 customers to upgrade. For those considering new deployments, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 will be a more attractive option than its predecessor, but how will it fare against rival products from Novell, Sun Microsystems, and Mandrakesoft?

A lot of good advice for novice administrators, plus a few tips and tricks for more advanced users.

Novell and HP are donating more software code to the open-source community, while IBM is beefing up solutions to get more users on Linux.

Finding a wireless PC Card network adapter that works with GNU/Linux can be frustrating, and involves three possible results: you find a card that works natively; you find a card that will only work through NdisWrapper; or you find a card that just doesn't work, but might eventually, you hope. The second approach involves using proprietary binary drivers, which disagrees with some distribution philosophies (as well as that of OpenBSD). If at all possible, you want to find a PC Card adapter that has an open source driver and works perfectly with GNU/Linux. Netgate has made that possible with its 2511 CD Plus EXT2 wireless LAN card.

Let's start off with some questions that may have answers that are harder than you would expect:

1. "In general, how do you react to outsiders that offer to present at your Linux User Group (LUG)?"
2. "What about commercial interests presenting to your LUG?"
3. "What would you do if a Microsoft employee showed up at your LUG?"
4. "If you allowed a Microsoft employee to present, just what kind of topics would you allow?

Now for the really tricky part: The questions, especially that last one, aren't hypothetical.

The snowballing success of Linux has attracted involvement from all corners of the computing realm--but the breadth of that interest is expected to complicate a revision of the software's legal underpinnings.

Invites Participation in Defining Requirements for Linux on the Enterprise Desktop

At LinuxWorld, Sun is previewing its StarOffice 8 beta, with better interoperability with Microsoft Office, and Release 3 of its Java Desktop System, featuring expanded device support.

- Novell Security Manager powered by Astaro delivers complete gateway security that protects businesses against security threats caused by hackers, viruses, worms, spam and intrusions

"The open source community is the ultimate marketing focus group," says entrepreneur Stephen Street, whose latest venture, StreetFire Sound Labs, is taking on traditional stereo equipment manufacturers in the "living room war" over home media equipment. StreetFire's first product, the fully open source RBX1600 personal music server, debuted in the fourth quarter of 2004. The big difference between StreetFire's $750 server and proprietary systems: "We want people to hack our box," says Street. "You know the people hacking their Tivos and running Linux on their Xboxes? We love those guys!"

Desktop Linux Summit 2005 proves to be a success

"Klax" is an i486 GNU/Linux Live-CD based on Slackware 10.1 with a patched Qt 3.3.4 and a complete KDE 3.4 Beta 2. Additionally it also contains KOffice 1.3.5 and k3b 0.11.20. All this within an ISO image of only 373MB. It can be used to give you an impression of the upcoming KDE 3.4, to verify if bugs still exist or discover new ones and to make screenshots.

IBM releases XL C/C++ ( a high-performance optimizing compiler ) to Linux developers.

We are one week into the nomination period for candidates for the position of the Debian Project Leader.

Three Los Angeles council members want the city to switch to an open-source platform to save millions of dollars in software costs. Council members Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greul and Jack Weiss introduced a motion yesterday asking the city's Information Technology Agency about a transition from proprietary software licenses to open-source platforms and programs. The money saved could be used to hire more police personnel, the council members said.

A Framingham technology show producer will bring its LinuxWorld exposition to Boston this week for the first time ever, recognizing the growth of the thriving open-source software industry in Massachusetts and MetroWest.