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Patents and the threat they pose to open source and overall software innovation are a hot topic, but patents may not be a useful weapons against a community that works with, ardently supports, and defends open source with money, time, and expertise.

Welcome to this year's 31st issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Erinn Clark reported that a bit of content is on the Debian Women website now. Steve Langasek reminded maintainers to rebuild their package if it depends on libtiff since the new version has hit unstable already.

Last week I talked about how to start desktop applications using the mouse and the desktop menu. Do this a few times and the multiple running desktop applications can make the desktop a bit overcrowded. To help overcome this, let's work with the application windows.

In the first part of this article, we talked about several different sound systems and APIs that were available for Linux and its various desktop environments. Many developers, however, need to write applications that will work across multiple environments, including different operating systems. Here's how we can accomplish this.

The threat of higher fees may now be the only way to prod more companies into buying SCO Group licenses because further lawsuits have been put on ice.

As part of its recently announced Asian push, Lycoris says it has signed agreements through which its Desktop/LX Tablet Edition Linux OS will be pre-installed on tablet PCs from MoBitS Electronics Inc. and Dialogue Technology Corp. Both Taipei-based companies are currently offering Lycoris's desktop Linux OS, Desktop/LX, as an option for their desktop PCs.

Catching up with Linux in the enterprise at last week's LinuxWorld event.

Gentoo at Linux World Expo and an update on the website redesign top this week's Gentoo Weekly Newsletter. Also covered is the search for a new owner of the Tips and Tricks section, along with the usual sections. Carlos is on vacation for the next few weeks and klieber will be pinch-editing during his absence. Be kind!

Suppose you want to be able to retrieve files from your Linux system remotely. The "standard" method of running the SSH server on port 22 is notoriously inadequate. OpenSSH, which is the SSH server on the majority of Linux installations, suffers from regular exploits of buffer overflow and other vulnerabilities, and you neither have the time to keep up with the patches nor want to make the effort -- you'd rather put up with not being able to access your files. This is where port knocking might seem to help -- but don't count on it.

Pen&Internet has released a version of its "natural handwriting recognition" program intended to run directly on Linux-based tablet PCs. "riteForm" can process handwritten forms and notes on mobile pen-enabled Linux devices, and was previously available only as a Web services component running on a remote server.

There are a lot of reasons to use Linux. You've seen people write or heard people speak about its use in clusters, offices, Web servers, and other common uses. One thing that hasn't been talked about enough is its utility as a superior tool for recovering data from other operating systems.

The anti-virus business is an interesting one. On the one hand, it's amazingly competitive on a worldwide basis, even if Symantec dominates the U.S. consumer market; there are a lot of companies in this business. But it's also a disappointing business technologically. The companies are not out to solve a problem as much as to acquire an annuity stream in the form of subscriptions for signature updates.

When coding a program, one of the best ways to show users that an event has happened is to produce sounds. That's why sound is now present in almost every program. Every operating system has different sound systems and APIs to access the sound card, so that no low-level coding is required to use the sound device. Programmers have many different choices concerning which system to use, especially under Linux -- and maybe that's the problem. This article will illustrate free sound architectures under Linux, as well as the different interfaces a programmer can use.