More than a dozen technology companies, including IBM, Red Hat, and Novell are planning to support a new integrated server and desktop Linux standard unveiled at next week's Linux Desktop Summit by the Free Standards Group. The FSG is a nonprofit organization that has worked for years on a number of open standards including a server specification called the Linux Standard Base.

"Gray and Bergamini recently worked together to develop the nfe driver to support NVIDIA ethernet controllers. In this interview, they talk about OpenBSD's policy to not ship binary-blobs, explaining the problems associated with drivers that use these blobs and the affect these types of drivers have on the open source community. They also detail the efforts involved in writing the nfe driver, describing why they started the project, how they were able to support undocumented hardware, and the features supported by the new driver."

Apple Computer faced tough questioning Thursday in its bid to gain access to electronic records of Mac enthusiast sites that published leaked details of an unreleased product. Although a lower court ruled last year that Apple should be able to gain access to electronic records of the enthusiast sites, a three-judge appeals panel in the State of California Court of Appeal, Sixth Appellate District, peppered Apple's lawyer with questions. The judges wanted to know whether the information at issue represented a genuine trade secret as well as whether journalists' right to protect their sources outweigh Apple's right to protect its trade secrets.

"IDC has released its first quarter PC market share figures, and for the first time in recent memory, it's not smooth sailing for Dell. Overall, it was a good quarter. PC shipments rose 12.9 percent from the same quarter in 2005, with the growth occurring worldwide. The big winners for the quarter were HP and Gateway. HP's gains are to be expected, given that it has been battling Dell for the number one market share position for the last several years. Gateway is a bigger surprise."

"The Ubuntu team is proud to present the beta release of Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake). With Ubuntu 6.06 Beta comes loads of bug fixes, a new look-and-feel, a new live-CD installer, GNOME 2.14.1, and much more." You can download it as both live-CD and install CD, and as always, available for x86, x86-64, and PowerPC.

"Opera Software today announced the first public beta of Opera 9. This version includes Widgets, small web programs running in their own windows that are fun, easy-to-use and live on users' desktops. The Opera 9 beta also features support for BitTorrent, a popular file downloading technology, in addition to an easy-to-use content blocker and thumbnail previews of tabbed sites. And yes, Opera remains available free of charge."

LLVM 1.7 has been released. "This release contains a completely rewritten llvm-gcc (based on GCC 4.0.1), a brand new SPARC backend, supports GCC-style generic vectors, supports SSE and Altivec intrinsics, support for Objective C/C++, the X86 backend generates much better code and can produce Scalar SSE code, this release has initial DWARF debugging support, includes a new llvm-config utility, has initial support for GCC-style inline assembly, and includes many target-independent code generator and optimizer improvements."

"Microsoft announces the availability of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 with Database Mirroring, SQL Server Management Studio Express, additional options for ISVs and normal feature fixes. The release of SQL Server 2005 SP1 follows the March 2006 Community Technology Preview and the initiation of a new customer collaboration model, which allowed active customer feedback to drive final updates and routine fixes delivered in this service pack."

After more than 5 million downloads, Microsoft has decided to extend its free Visual Studio Express downloads indefinitely. In related news, they are running a contest too.

As part of its quarterly patch cycle, Oracle on Tuesday released fixes for a long list of security vulnerabilities in many of its products. The Critical Patch Update delivers remedies for 14 flaws related to Oracle's Database products, five related to the Collaboration Suite, one in Application Server, 15 related to E-Business Suite and Applications, two in the Enterprise Manager, one in PeopleSoft's Enterprise portal and one in JD Edwards software.

"Sometimes we don't really see what our eyes are viewing. That's true with your computer screen, and it's true in nature as well. Oh sure, we can say what we think we're seeing, but we're missing the big story such as the man behind the curtain, to recall a famous phrase from an even more beloved movie." Read the article here.

Mark Shuttleworth has announced the plans for the next Ubuntu release - The Edgy Eft, the successor to Dapper Drake. He charts the territory post-Dapper for those of you who like to dream a little.

Efforts to bring glitzy new graphics to Linux are fueling an old conflict: Does proprietary software belong in open-source Linux? The issue involves software modules called drivers, which plug into the kernel at the heart of the open-source operating system. Drivers let software communicate with hardware such as network adapters, hard drives and video cards.

Noted PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak was one of the first to predict the release of Boot Camp. His prophesizing continues in his lastest column. "A cloud is rising over Mac OS X and its future unless Apple makes its boldest move ever: turning OS X into an open-source project. That would make the battle between OS X and Linux the most interesting one on the computer scene. With all attention turned in that direction, there would be nothing Microsoft could do to stem a reversal of its fortunes."