Showing all newswire headlines

Novell is announcing a new Linux desktop today, called "Novell Linux Desktop 9: Powered by SUSE Linux." Truth be told, they've been privately announcing the product for at least the past week, doing presentations all over the country while trying to woo both customers and the press. It was in the latter regard that NewsForge spoke on Friday with Ted Haeger, Director Of Marketing for the Novell Linux Desktop. We're offering more coverage of this announcement than we normally do for press releases because this particular announcement could be critical to the advance of Linux on the desktop.

David Coursey says "Firefox is making the world a better place". However, he cannot use it for all his browsing because it cannot do everthing that his copy of Internet Explorer, which he has loaded up with many add-ons over the years, can do...Meanwhile, over at ZDNet, columnist John Carroll doesn't understand why many people like Firefox so much. He theorises that Firefox is mostly loved for political open source reasons rather than because it's the best Web browser.

Even though it's painfully obvious that this whole issue is just one huge marketing campaign by Novell, carefully constructed and well-written I might add, it still remains to be seen exactly where the company is trying to go with all this.

IBM fosters enthusiasm for Open source and Linux with it's annual competition for university students.

Cognos is getting behind IBM's precious Linux-on-Power push and is going to offer its ReportNet kit on the Linux-on-pSeries platform. The arrangement is reportedly part of a global multi-year agreement to drive business intelligence adoption on IBM's Linux machines.

Sun Microsystems Inc. is counting on a new version of its operating system for server computers coming out this month to help lead the onetime tech star back to profitability. But the company is also hoping it can boost its performance with a little help from long-time rival Microsoft Corp. and by selling computing power the way utilities sell electricity.

Some Linux experts are questioning a report by British-based mi2g, which calls Linux the "most breached" computing environment worldwide, with Microsoft Windows placing a distant second.

Penguin Computing has announced the closing of a $10 million round of financing to expand company operations. The deal was led by London Merchant Securities plc (LMS), Convergence Partners, and Sunrise Venture Capital, and was also supported by existing investors.

IBM's Linux Scholar Challenge is one of a few programs to drum up enthusiasm among students worldwide in Linux and open-source software.

Adobe Systems dips its toes into desktop Linux waters, while open-source Web browsers Mozilla and Firefox make waves with gains over Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The recent move by Pantek, a NE Ohio company that specializes in Linux based software development, technical support and technical security services, has generated an immediate response from new clients nationally and has expanded their winning team. Formerly based in Solon, Ohio, Pantek’s expansion was a necessary endeavor based on the growth of the company. “We’re all working hard in short-term, to make a huge long-term impact on the industry and for our clients,” said Richard Zack, 23 yr. old CEO of Pantek.

It's been reported that Apache Software Foundation and Debian GNU/Linux Project have given a thumbs down to SenderID, stating, the new version doesn't change the terms of the license. As SIDF implementation spreads, the acceptance grows and education increases, the stubbornness displayed in their bias will be exposed.

I have no idea whether Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates stays up at night worrying about his empire but, if he does, he may very well be losing sleep over the Mozilla Foundation.

The Free Software Foundation has put forward a recommendation to those distributing software under free and open-source licences to help them avoid legal pitfalls

For those unfamiliar with Debian, all I can say is I've tried and used a lot of distributions, but nothing comes close to Debian. Debian is the old grandfather of Linux and was one of the first Linux distributions out there. It was certainly the first distribution with package management. Besides having a rich history, Debian is reputed to be rock-solid, has excellent package management system and to go along about 15,000+ packages (as of today). It is completely free in spirit and in cost.

A Scottish police force is extending its commitment to open-source software by developing a Linux-based system for ensuring it complies with the impending Freedom of Information Act legislation. The Act comes into force on 1 January 2005 and is intended to facilitate 'open government' by allowing the public to request access to government data. Central Scotland police, based in Stirling, will pilot a Linux-based system developed by IBM that was one of the projects referred to in the recent pro-Linux Office of Government Commerce report.

A Linux Resource Center has been set up at the KR School of Information Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. The center, which will work on Linux-based solutions for the educational institutes, is a result of collaboration between the IIT and Intel.

This presentation (registration required, flash preferable) shows Sun's plans for their Opteron support as well as how Linux represents a transitional technology (for customers that have not realized Solaris is better) as they move to support enterprises with hardware capable of running Solaris and Windows. Anyone with doubts on where Sun stands should watch this presentation.

As described in parts one and two of this series, open source licensing principles are generally, if not exclusively, associated with software. These principles may be less readily applicable to non-software works, such as documents.

There is a growing belief that the wide-ranging benefits of ICT can be delivered to Africa's tertiary education sector only through the strategic adoption of open standards, free and open source software, and open content.