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KDE and its various applications have featured very well in the Linux Journal 2004 Readers' Choice Awards which are published in the November issue of the magazine. Most importantly, in the category of "Favorite Desktop Environment", KDE came in first followed by GNOME. The trend over recent years has shown KDE gaining more and more popularity over GNOME and this year KDE received two votes for every one that GNOME received.

In a posting to the lkml, Al Viro offered a guide on how to cross-compile multiple platforms in parallel.

This article shows you how to improve the boot speed of your Linux system without compromising usability. Essentially, the technique involves understanding system services and their dependencies, and having them start up in parallel, rather than sequentially, when possible.

Silicon Graphics (SGI) announced last week it was teaming with the U.S. Department of Energy to begin work on Open/Speedshop, an open source version of SGI's performance analysis tool Speedshop designed to run on Linux platforms. The tool will be issued under a yet unnamed open source license.

The latest advancement of embedded Linux as a telco platform was the release last week of a registered Linux distribution from TimeSys that complies with the Open Source Development Lab's (OSDL) Carrier Grade Linux 2.0 specifications.

One of the minor ironies of the Linux world is the slight disconnect between the mantra of "choice" the most ardent advocates use to make the case for a multitude of graphical interfaces and the state of the North American enterprise Linux market, where a single distributor has dominated since the late '90s. That distributor is, of course, Red Hat...

I have just started a free course at the department of Informatics, which is a part of the School of Economics and Commercial Law at Göteborg University. The purpose of this course is to study the philosophical foundations and theories that have developed in the open source/free software field. Beginning with a historical view of the developments in theory and philosophy the course participants will continue their study of the phenomenon and also be given the opportunity to discuss the new issues these development philosophies have given rise to. Additionally the question of whether these same theories and philosophies can be applied in other fields of intellectual endeavor aside from programming.

The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache HTTP Server Project are pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.33 of the Apache HTTP Server ("Apache"). This Announcement notes the significant changes in 1.3.33 as compared to 1.3.31 (1.3.32 was not formally released).

Latest report from the UK, although indicative of serious change, tells us again what we already know.

JDOM is a method for processing XML from a Java environment. Conceived in late 2001, JDOM reached its 1.0 release in September. JDOM takes a more Java-centric approach to processing XML than its counterparts Simple API for XML (SAX) and Document Object Model (DOM).

If users understand how such software may be licensed and software vendors take greater care to research the intellectual property used in their products, many open-source software concerns would go away, asserts a panel of experts.

SUSE LINUX 9.2 is out now. It combines a fast, secure operating system and more than 1,000 popular open source applications. It is the first complete Linux package to harness both the improved Linux kernel 2.6 and the recently enhanced GNOME 2.6 and KDE 3.3 user desktop environments. Ideal for Linux enthusiasts and developers, SUSE LINUX Professional 9.2 improves support for mobile users and delivers a host of essential tools.

Red Hat has released five Indian language fonts as open source, licensed under the General Public License. The fonts named “Lohit” which means “Red” in Sanskrit, are available in five Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi and Tamil. These fonts will be available with Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

A UK government report into the viability of open source software has concluded that it is not only a credible alternative to proprietary software like Windows, it will also meet most of the requirements of desktop users.

Microsoft's latest attack on Linux, in which its chief executive Steve Ballmer repeated the key themes of Microsoft's "Get The Facts" campaign, has evoked a strong response from Novell which accuses the software giant of of selectively using biased reports to back up its claims. In the email sent to Microsoft customers and partners on Wednesday, Ballmer claimed that Windows was a better choice than Linux in terms of security, training, total cost of ownership (TCO) and protection against legal action over patent violations.

Hewlett-Packard made news last June when it announced it would start a Southeast Asia rollout of its Multi-user 441 Desktop, a low-cost Linux-based computing setup that allows up to four users to share one computer, each with his own monitor, keyboard, mouse, and piece of the CPU. But Userful, a computing services company in Alberta, Canada, has been selling its own multi-user Linux, called 1-Box, for two years already. The system makes it possible for up to 10 users at a time to maximize the efficiency of one computer.

Open source software is now a viable option for the public sector's desktops, says Whitehall buying arm the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). [In the United Kingdom] The agency is publishing its conclusions today following a series of year-long trials of open source technology across a number of public sector organisations.

The already-bruising battle for control of the fast-growing Linux market has become even tougher after Dell announced Wednesday that it will distribute Novell's version of the upstart operating system on its servers. At the same time, Microsoft has ratcheted up its fight against the open-source software by blasting Linux customers and partners with an email from CEO Steve Ballmer extolling the advantages of its proprietary Windows platform.

The "C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3" book written by Trolltech software engineer Jasmin Blanchette and Trolltech's documentation manager Mark Summerfield, already featured by the dot, can now be downloaded in PDF format from the publisher's homepage in the "Downloads" section.

In the face of growing competition from Linux, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer delivered a four-page memo to customers on Wednesday outlining the economic and security advantages Windows has over Linux, the potential dangers of open source involving indemnification, and the intent to aggressively convince Unix shops to migrate to Windows.