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Enterprises previously sceptical about open-source alternatives to commercial software have opened up to the concept, an SDForum conference in California heard yesterday.

Enterprises that in the past may have been leery of open source alternatives to commercial software have opened up to the concept, panelists said here Tuesday at an SDForum conference entitled "Open Source – Entering the Mainstream.”

Four major Linux companies are bonding together to create a united Linux core distribution around the Linux Standard Base with broad industry support.

The OpenBSD team earlier this month released version 3.6 of the free operating system, with support for more hardware, updated application software, and bug fixes included. This time around OpenBSD has added support for multi-CPU systems, a number of drivers for new peripheral hardware, and about 200 more applications to the Ports tree. We took the new version for a spin, and liked what we found.

Taking its cue from Linus Torvalds' goal of "total world domination" by Linux, Sun Microsystems works to pave a path away from its declining market share by focusing on the promising platform. But where are the details?

It's an insurance company's dream: Sell policies for something so unlikely to occur that you'll get to scoop up premiums and never have to pay out. That's pretty much what's going on with companies selling antivirus products for Linux. Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier submitted the following editorial to osOpinion/osViews which asks the question, "Are buyers of Linux antivirus software wasting their money?"

MicroWorld Software Services, developers of anti-virus and content security software, eScan and MailScan, announced today that MailScan for Linux has joined the Novell Ready Program. This status establishes that MicroWorld's products are now compatible with Novell Enterprise Linux. The product was awarded Novell Ready status for SuSE Linux desktop, Enterprise Server 8, 9 and the SuSE Linux Standard server.

Imagine a computer network for small businesses that costs less than half as much as most companies now spend on their desktops and servers, never needs expensive on-site service calls, and always has the latest software and security patches without the business owner even thinking about it. This has been technically feasible with Linux for at least five years, but no one has gone to the trouble of marketing it. I hope someone decides to build and sell a true "plug-and-play" Linux office computer system soon. It would revolutionize the way small businesses buy and use computers.

Next month, Linux server and storage specialist Pogo Linux will become the first server maker to stop messing around and actually deliver an eight-way server based on the Opteron 800 series processors.

Welcome to this year's 45th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Bruce Perens has written an article on software patents in standards and explains how they hinder software development. It seems that the memory consumption problem in SpamAssassin 3 is finally fixed, so the package may be able to migrate into sarge.

Microsoft announced on Tuesday a program that will pay some transition costs for companies that want to move from Novell's NetWare operating system onto servers running Windows.

We're very pleased to announce that Connectiva, Mandrakesoft, Progeny and Turbolinux today announce the creation of a common implementation of the LSB 2.0 which will serve as the base for future products. The project, called "Linux Core Consortium" (LCC), is backed by Linux supporters such as Computer Associates, HP, Novell, Red Hat, Sun, OSDL, and the Free Standards Group.

Mark Angeli is leading the Linux faithful to a new place: Foo. LinuxFoo.org is a community site that provides Linux users with a place to ask advice, share wisdom, rant about flaky software, and chit-chat about the latest distribution release.

This summer I had the pleasure of being the editor for the new O'Reilly book Knoppix Hacks. Though I had futzed with Knoppix before, and even created a customized version of it for an O'Reilly event, I was not a regular user of the live CD.

Not many open source aficionados will realize the impact, but by making Solaris 10 free and capable of operating on any kind of hardware, Sun is making a coup in the server market.

Only the paranoid survive, and that is no less true when securing Linux systems as any other. Fortunately, a host of security features are built into the kernel, are packaged with one of the many Linux distributions, or are available separately as open source applications. This second installment covers inventory assessment, risk analysis, identifying user categories and access privileges, and then moves on to a more detailed action plan and steps for safely acquiring a Linux distribution.

HP claimed today that it will boost mainstream adoption of Linux and open source software after signing a support deal with JBoss designed to help firms migrate from proprietary systems.

Linuxlookup.com is reporting SCALE 3X Expo has opened for business and is now accepting early registrations for the February 12-13, 2005 conference. A full pass (expo floor and seminars is $50 until January 1, 2005, and $65 thereafter, a student pass is $25 until January 1, 2005, and $32.50 thereafter, and an expo-floor-only pass is $10. LinuxLookup.com readers can get discounted rates by using the promo code "LOOK".

Tired of VMWare's emulation slowing you down? Topologilinux has the solution. Rather than providing a virtual machine for Linux to run in, Topologilinux allows you to install itself into a single file on your Windows FS. This allows you to run the Slackware-based distro without spending the system resources on a VM. It's also useable as a stand-alone (or dual-boot) distro. Sound good? It's an excellent theory, though apparantley poorly implemented. So before you get all excited, check out LinuxForumsDOTorg's first hand review, where jeremy rips it apart.

Performance Technologies (PT) is shipping a Linux environment and development kit for its intelligent shelf management (ISM) cards for high-availability systems. NexusWare ISM includes a 2.4.x-based kernel designed specifically for PT's CPC7301 intelligent shelf management (ISM) card, along with a software stack and tools.