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New Product Combines Two Most Popular Microsoft Alternatives Into One Cost-Saving Package

Steve Ballmer's warning to Asian officials that they risk legal action should they dare use Linux instead of Windows has drawn a strong response from a leading open source group.

Open-source software, increasingly popular with budget-conscious companies, is beginning to expand into a new area: The lucrative infrastructure-software market dominated by industry giants such as Microsoft.

This column gets results. A few months ago I suggested that Internet users would do well to give up on Microsoft Corp.'s buggy and insecure Internet Explorer browser and check out some well-crafted alternatives. And so you have, in a big way.

How is the FBI supposed to track down bad guys -- including terrorists -- if it can't rely on cross-agency handling of fingerprints? With new open source software developed on Linux and written primarily by a programmer working for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), fingerprint quality and the ability to match prints taken by a disparate variety of print scanners is improving dramatically.

Software licensing fees can cost firms millions, but most government agencies and businesses are still hesitant to make the transition to open source software.

Known as Lindows in the past, Linspire wouldn’t have many problems if it was based in Brazil. For those who remember, Microsoft sued Lindows over its name alleging something like "it could puzzle users". In Brazil we have Freedows, a Linux-based operating system just like former Lindows. There are two interesting highlights, tough. It's almost completely identical to Windows XP (Lindows wasn't that similar) and it has sort of the government hand on it.

Open-source, GPL, and other forms of freeware sometimes run afoul of myopic company licensing standards. But any organization that's cutting itself off from GPL and other legitimate forms of licensed freeware is seriously hurting its own business, Fred Langa says.

If developing code in open source languages and spending time with luminaries in the local developer community sounds like a good way to spend a few days off work, you should probably consider spending early December in Melbourne at the inaugural Open Source Developers Conference. (OSDC)

Whether Linux is suitable for the desktop yet is a point debated by analysts, journalists, hobbyists, and pundits worldwide. It's easy to find stories about enterprise adoption of Linux for servers, and corporate CIOs are ever so willing to extol the virtues of open source software -- as long as it is kept in the back. No one ever goes all the way and puts Linux on the secretaries' computers (OK, maybe it happened once). Perhaps the way to see Linux adopted globally in the enterprise is to start developing desktop users at a tender age. That's what Scott Belford and the other members of the Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation (HOSEF) are counting on.

With a relatively hostile environment that has pitted proprietary software against open source as a backdrop, the Free Software Foundation, the steward of the GNU General Public License, is working on the first revamp to the license in 13 years.

Sun is moving closer to an open-source process for its Java software this week with the public posting of the source code of "Mustang", its next version for desktop computers.

Most wireless network interface cards (NICs) lack a bundled Linux driver, but of course they come with a Windows driver. Some open source community developers, on their own time, study the product specifications and create their own drivers, and allow the community to use and develop them further. But some popular chipset vendors don't release their specifications, making it impossible for their device to work for the Linux community. End of the line? No way.

The growing importance of the Linux operating system as an alternative to Microsoft Windows was the subject of a recent forum held by distributor Ingram Micro Canada for its channel partners.

Progeny Linux does Debian one step better. If you like Ubuntu you'll love Progeny. A slick GNOME desktop, a solid Debian core, and the Anaconda installer have made Progeny my new desktop of choice. Progeny has also recently become part of the Linux Core Consortium (LCC) to implement Linux Standard Base (LSB) 2.0. Watch your back Ubuntu for Progeny's new 'Progeny Debian 2.0 Developer Edition RC1' release.

At OSDir we just had to install this distro, and take some screenshots. Our screenshot tour will take you from boot, through the installation, to the desktop. Then we'll have a look at the taskbar, menus, system configuration, and a few of the newly added features of this great distro.

Linspire Inc, the company formerly known as Lindows announced on November 18 that it has licensed Windows Media technology and made it immediately available via a click-and-run online update to the users of the Linux distro.

Learn how to build a GNU cross compiler for PowerPC code development by downloading the PowerPC 750GX/FX evaluation kit. The source code illustrates how to initialize and utilize various features of the processor--memory management unit, interrupts, and debugging features. The board schematics provide an example of how to connect the processor to a system controller (bridge) chip and other components in the system. (Registration required)

Initial coverage of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's comments during an event in Singapore yesterday left the folks back at headquarters in Redmond trying to clarify things and put them in context.

"SCO...twisted my relationship with OSRM to say that it proved that I believe there are substantial IP risks in Linux." This is FUD, Pamela Jones stresses, but it posed a dilemma: "I kept coming back to the same thing. If my working for OSRM is doing harm by creating FUD possibilities, I need to remove that issue. Money is nice, but integrity is everything." So saying, "PJ" resigned from OSRM.

Memory management is one of the most fundamental areas of computer programming. In many scripting languages, you don't have to worry about how memory is managed, but that doesn't make memory management any less important. Knowing the abilities and limitations of your memory manager is critical for effective programming. Get an overview of the memory management techniques that are available to Linux programmers, focusing on the C language but applicable to other languages as well.