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In this article I offer the required steps to turn a portion of RAM into swap. One of the reasons might want to try this is that using RAM as swap turns out to be many times less expensive than using most solid state storage solutions as very fast swap, plus it is a lot easier to purchase and implement. Read on for the details.

Move by China, Japan and S Korea to reduce dependence on Windows; Beijing sees reliance as potential threat. A North Asian government alliance to promote the Linux operating system and reduce dependence on Microsoft's Windows, plans to release its first products for China in six months, a senior official said on Monday.

Linux is coming to the rescue of Britain's ITV plc, which was in a mess, from a technology point of view. ITV plc was formed two years ago through the £2.6 billion ($A6.6 billion) merger of the two biggest UK independents, Granada and Carlton, but what was rational for companies and their subsidiaries resulted in expensive incompatibilities in the merged operation.

Switzerland's Endress+Hauser (International) Holding AG, a global supplier of process control systems, has migrated all its business applications from SAP AG to a mainframe running the open-source Linux operating system.

If you're a Linux administrator, no matter what size your environment, it's quite likely that you use Vim. You probably use it as a config file editor, or for light programming tasks. If you're already familiar with the basics, have a look at some slick tips that'll have you using Vim for more than just ho-hum, everyday admin tasks.

What do you do when you need to use Windows programs in GNU/Linux? You could look for free software alternatives to those programs, but in some cases -- such as with Macromedia's proprietary Flash MX Web development environment -- there is no suitable replacement in GNU/Linux. That's where CrossOver Office by CodeWeavers comes in; using this software you can run a number of Windows programs in GNU/Linux without any loss in performance or stability. Too bad it's under a restrictive proprietary license.

In another blow to Microsoft, a government agency in New South Wales, Australia, signs a deal with Sun to migrate 1,500 users to the company's StarOffice productivity suite and Messaging products.

An Internet portal devoted to providing free graphic resources has launched a program that pays developers for their software contributions. FlamingText says they use The Gimp as a back-end to create animated logos over the web. The site invites visitors to "create cool, custom images for free, to use on your website, or in your e-mail."

Place too much luggage on a plane and it won't fly. File too many people into an elevator and it might not go up. But if an organization that grants open source software licenses gives out too many approvals, will quality suffer? Open Source Initiative president Eric Raymond said in the future there will be fewer licenses, but one industry analyst believes licenses help organizations optimize their open source goals.

Lycoris has announced the immediate availability of Desktop/LX 1.4, the fifth release of its Linux desktop. The release is based on KDE 3.2.3, Bitstream's btX2 font rendering engine, and other new features.

Mozilla Japan to promote adoption of Mozilla products.

Users can now disable CSS via Use Style > None or a global preference. It is now possible to open a bookmark in a new tab with ctrl+click/middle click. See changelog for more updates.

Mandrake has launched a survey for feedback to be used in improving Mandrakelinux's user interface, Requesting feedback on the ergonomics of the desktop, Mandrakesoft is soliciting user opinions on usability. [Thanks to DesktopLinux.com for the link.]

Many users need access to an office productivity suite, and users of Linux on POWER are no exception. OpenOffice.org provides an open-source product that is multi-platform and contains many of the key applications that are needed by an office user. This article explains how to install and configure OpenOffice.org for multi-user Linux on iSeries and pSeries servers.