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I've spent much of the last month wrestling with video screen-capture software. My objective is to make simple, human-friendly video instructions for various Linux distributions and popular free/open source programs. There are many Windows programs that can do this, but they use such a bewildering array of proprietary codecs that it's hard to create videos in Windows that can be displayed by any computer, running any operating system. On the Linux side of the fence, there are only a few programs that do this sort of thing, but they are not competitive with what's available for Windows in either utility or usability.

Today a site called LinuxElectrons posted a story categorizing Sun Microsystems' recent 10k filing as "probably as close as Microsoft can legally get to buying OpenOffice.org." Sun, however, strongly disagrees with this characterization and listed several clarifications for us. In short, it's just not true.

The Free Standards Group and the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) hope that improved standards for Linux will help accelerate its adoption by enterprise and large business customers.

Virtual machine software allows you to run one operating system (and its applications) from within the environment of another. For years the most recognized name in virtual machine software for the x86 architecture has been VMware, whose eponymous industry-leading product supports a wide variety of guest operating systems. Recently EMC Corp. bought VMware, and has since released VMware Workstation 4.5 for $199. The most recent release is 4.5.2, which adds 64-bit host operating system support. There isn't much that VMware Workstation can't do, except perhaps achieve the level of performance that a genuine installation of the guest operating system enjoys.

Using Linux, Interpharm Data Systems processes claims for half of the country's medical providers and pharmacies. The company handles about one million transactions a month, valued at R200 million. This is one of the successful "business-ready" Linux installations that is being highlighted on a new website (Linux.co.za) launched last week to promote Linux and open source software.

Retail and manufacturing workers will soon wield RFID wands that support end-to-end Linux, through a new two-vendor pact rolled out this week. In a separate partnership, another vendor will team up with two integrators on an RFID job for Beaver Street Fisheries, a big frozen foods supplier that's quite willingly joining in on Wal-Mart's controversial RFID trials.

Some time ago we made a mention of Skype on Linux in one of our short newsflashes called 'Quickies'. We were very pleased by the way it nicely blends itself into the KDE desktop. Now we contacted the Skype people where we came in touch with Jaanus Kase who took time to answer our questions.

Analysts say a new standard version of Linux should go a long way to raise the platform's chances in the enterprise by improving open-source software's interoperability.

If you were a musician who decided to start an Internet business, but you didn't know a thing about running a Web server, what would you do? Some people might farm it out, but for Tom Kramer, who found all his cash flow sailing toward his colocation vendor, the cost was prohibitive. His only option was to learn how to do it himself, on Linux.

important user data such as contacts and calendaring into their applications." GNOME is supported on a variety of platforms, including GNU/Linux (more commonly

Following the release Tuesday of a new interoperable version of Linux, analysts said the standard should go along way towards preventing a serious roadblock to widespread acceptance of Linux: the fragmentation of open-source distributions.

Red Hat's top desktop engineer and open source desktop advocate Havoc Pennington has announced a new project that seeks to define and develop a uniform framework that spans thin, fat, and cached "desktop" clients. Goals of the just-announced Stateless Linux project include moving enterprises toward a model that combines the best features of thin and fat client computing. The resulting technology, according to Pennington's proposal, would enable administrators to quickly update and easily recreate software configurations and user data on new hardware and allows centralized management across an organization.

Microsoft Corp.'s settlement with Sun Microsystems Inc. includes a provision explicitly preserving the Redmond company's right to sue licensees of a free alternative to its dominant Microsoft Office software.

"The UserLinux Project has placed a downloadable installation mini-CD in beta test. The CD is only 4.5 megabytes in size, and downloads the rest of the system during the installation." LinuxBeta.com's screenshot slideshow shows how easy UserLinux has made installing Debian.

Novell will launch its business Linux desktop by the end of the year despite an extended testing program that has seen it miss its intended summer launch. Novell has had to keep the beta program for the new product closed to reduce the number of participants and ensure that the company gets meaningful results.

Microsoft cared little for politics until the Department of Justice called it a monopoly. Now the company approaches lobbying the way it approaches everything-aggressively-and consequently it dominates the technology policy agenda. CIOs may not be better off for it.

Nagios calls itself an "open source host, service and network monitoring program". In reality, though, it's more of a monitoring framework, in that it allows an administrator to quickly fold the one-liners they use to gather information right into the configuration. Add to this the numerous plugins available, and you can easily integrate Nagios with monitoring tools you already use, like RRDTool or MRTG.

Linspire PCs are now available at Staples.com. Digital Lifestyles's Northgate L-Series computers will ship with Linspire's Linux desktop preinstalled. The PCs come with six months access to software downloads through Linspire's repository, and include 24/7 toll free support, according to an announcement today.

Neoxen Systems, a European software company behind Neoxen® Modus for OpenOffice.org and Neoxen® Qwinux has raised about one million euros capital investment.

KDE and GNOME are two of the most popular GUI for running Linux and Unix desktops or workstations. The software packages provide basic Window/Mac-like interfaces with mouse support, drag-and-drop file manipulation, task bars and tiled application windows. They also provide auxiliary applications such as drawing, calculator, basic text file editing and other software.