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An interview with Bill McCarty, author of a new book on SELinux, about the potential SELinux holds for secure computing.

The platform I currently use daily is Windows XP Professional. Now, before you burn me at the stake for heresy, let me illustrate why it works so well for me, an avid user of open source software.

The SCO Group's high-profile legal actions targeting Linux faded from prominence in 2004, but they left a legacy: scrutiny of the intellectual-property foundations of open-source software.

A new survey finds that Linux is continuing to gain acceptance in the enterprise, especially in the area of messaging. Osterman Research Inc. interviewed IT decision makers at 103 companies and found that 55% would consider switching to Linux messaging over the next two years, as long as there were no major disruptions to end users during the migration process.

Ever since Novell acquired SUSE, the Linux community has been wondering when and how SUSE Linux would change. Novell's release of the Novell Linux Desktop (NLD) struck fear and confusion into many long-time SUSE users and Novell watchers.

For new Linux users, the hardest thing can be trying to get an answer to one simple question: "Which Linux distribution should I use?" Back in the world of that other OS, the choice is pretty simple since you had no choice, or as Henry Ford might have put it, you can have "any color you want as long as it's black". In the Linux world, you can get black, yellow, red, blue, green, and every color in between. I personally think it is a wonderful thing that so many Linux distributions exist. Aside from creating a rich OS landscape, it furthers creativity and fosters innovation in software design. This can only be a good thing. While this makes for a colorful world, it can be very confusing for the new user.

The latest version of NetBSD has been ported to additional environments, including an open-source virtual machine monitor

The Linux Game Tome (LGT), a.k.a. The Happy Penguin, is an ever-growing compendium of computer games that are either specifically designed to run on Linux, or have been ported to Linux.

Here we are, December of 2004. Roughly 6 years after the government brought suit against Microsoft for blatant anti-trust violation. They had gotten into trouble for bolting Internet Explorer into Windows 98, remember?

Last week I was talking with a small business IT consultant who switches clients' servers to Linux (and Samba) all day long without any problems, but finds few clients interested in moving their desktops to Linux. The reason? "QuickBooks," he said. While there are many small business accounting packages that happily run on Linux, including GnuCash, Quasar, SQL-Ledger, and AccPac, QuickBooks dominates this market. And its loyal users don't want to switch to another package even if it's just as good as -- or possibly better than -- QuickBooks.

Red Hat would make an attractive acquisition target for Sun Microsystems, an analyst wrote Wednesday, as the computer hardware maker tries to catch up with rivals. Sun missed the Linux movement, which Raleigh-based Red Hat led, as competitors such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard embraced it. Now the company, known for its powerful computer servers, must take bold steps to recover, Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich wrote in a report to investors.

This well-written book by one of the leaders of the phpMyAdmin community covers a lot of ground--and might get you interested in working on the project.

Individuals who donated money to The Mozilla Foundation will see their names in print today

Vincenzo Ciaglia of Linux Netwosix talks about this year of Linux Security. A full immersion in the world of Linux Security from many sides and points of view.

Digital People, Inc is a software consultancy that specializes in assisting companies to exploit opportunities presented by open source software.

IDC on Wednesday painted an optimistic outlook for Linux over the next few years, predicting that overall revenue for desktops, servers, and Linux-compatible packaged software will reach $35 billion by 2008.

Michael Singer writes an interesting article today, "Linux to Grow Steady for Next Four Years," for Jupitermedia's Internetnews.com. He cooly states, "Linux is much more popular in the enterprise than previously thought, according to a new report out today." Given how grossly this understates the truth about GNU/Linux and its prospects, such tempered optimism deserves a cascading laugh track.

The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today announced that it has placed a two-page ad in the December 16th edition of the New York Times. The ad, coordinated by Spread Firefox, features the names of the thousands of people worldwide who contributed to the Mozilla Foundation's fundraising campaign to support last month's highly successful launch of the open source Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser.

Authentication is easily one of the most critical services provided by your network infrastructure. It is the gatekeeper for every resource on your network. Workstations, applications, printers, and files would all be open to the world without a system of ensuring that only those people who need any given resource can gain access to it. Once you have accepted the fact that you need authentication, you must decide whether to stay with one network operating system in the interest of a completely homogenous network, or accept a "best of breed" system that will better fulfill your needs, even though it will complicate your environment. If you choose the second option, often times you are left with a management nightmare, where you have two, three, or even more authentication engines to maintain across your network operating systems.

A public meeting held to discuss the European directive on software patents has disappointed some anti-patent campaigners, who say their concerns weren't addressed.