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Linux and open source seem to have energized Novell's user and partner community and may give Novell a chance to undo its most fundamental error vis-a-vis Microsoft--misjudging the importance of integration of its services with a capable application server and not having tight integration with the enterprise desktop.

Europe plans direct patentability of computer programs, data structures and process descriptions.

In this issue, we cover special features: statements from the Fedora Project Leader, Cristian Gafton, as well as the Fedora Legacy Project Lead, Jesse Keating. Fedora Core 2 Test 3 has been released, notes for it accompany, along with tips on getting dual-head video as well as webcams that work well with Fedora. There are plenty more updates, with regards to documents, new scripts, and ideas to tame the lists.

Zend Technologies is completing its expanded third financing round, with a $4 million investment from a leading US West Coast venture capital fund. When the agreement is signed, expected in a few days, Zend will close the $10 million financing round. Zend had set itself a target of $8 million for the round. Including the present round, Zend will have raised $16 million to date.

Many companies have come to favor specialized measurable education for both their employees and those they look to hire, as witness the large number of "certified" acronyms nowadays -- CCNA, MCSE, RHCE, SCSE, LPIC, ICSA. A few years ago, you couldn't find a Linux certification program anywhere. Today, with Linux showing up all over the enterprise, training and certification programs are showing up as well. In fact, three of the six acronyms above refer to Linux certifications, not the Cisco or Microsoft certifications we're used to hearing about.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Nigeria in association with Novell Africa is organizing a one-day Linux road-show in Lagos. The road-show is to further create awareness on the use and deployment of Suse Linux by the Information Technology (IT) community in the country. This is another step in strengthening the relationship between the two firms, especially in expanding and offering Linux from the desktop to the datacenter.

The 2.6.6 release, however, is noteworthy on several fronts beyond the usual "kernel speedups and fixups," as Morton said. The kernel's stability continues to improve as it inches closer to its initial promise of enterprise-class scalability and memory management.

Toting "DB2 on Linux" hats and green DB2 bumper stickers featuring the friendly Linux penguin logo, IBM is sending a message to DBAs that the database of choice for establishing clusters on the open source platform is DB2 -- and not products from its nemesis, Oracle Corp.

Last week I attended the International PHP Conference in Amsterdam. There was a small exhibition, but the main attraction was the large number of lectures by well-known PHP gurus. The first day was reserved for two whole-day "Power Workshops," where the audience got an elaborate introduction to either PEAR or XML processing in PHP 5. During the last two days there were almost 30 shorter sessions about various topics.

Novell Inc. has introduced a new pricing model for its Suse Enterprise Linux operating system that allows customers to pay a lower flat rate for Linux support, the company announced Wednesday. The new support offerings give Novell's customers an alternative to its existing per-system support contracts, and could make life a little easier for Linux users who have been critical of the per-system and per-processor support offerings of Novell and its rival Red Hat Inc.

In an effort to help higher-level developers build payment and transaction functions into their Web sites and applications, PayPal has released a suite of free APIs that the eBay-owned company claims will enable more streamlined and automated access to its platform. PayPal Developer Network director Dave McClure told NewsForge the initial three API calls are just the beginning of a series of APIs the company will release over coming quarters.

IBM Workplace, a new application management model launched this week, is bound to spell changes ahead for Linux developers, administrators, and desktop users. Just what kind of impact should the Linux community expect?

Three companies - Linux cluster vendor California Digital, Quadrics, and Intel - have just announced that they have successfully deployed the most powerful Linux supercomputer ever built: a state-of-the-art turnkey solution for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory codenamed "Thunder."

For those wanting to run Windows under Linux, CodeWeavers, Inc. has zeroed in on thirty popular apps like Lotus Notes 6.51 and MS Project.

NetBSD's Linux emulation doesn't run a Linux kernel on a virtual machine; it runs Linux binaries on a NetBSD kernel. Linux emulation let you run plenty of useful programs that won't run natively under NetBSD, such as Sun's 1.4 Java Runtime Environment and JDK.

Opennet, master distributor for Red Hat in the Middle East and Africa, has announced the availability of the Red Hat Desktop, the first market deliverable of its client strategy.

How one company is making the move to open-source software for their computing needs.