Doing the Impossible: Versora Progression Desktop

  Submitted by SilentBob4 Linspire 20 Comments
MadPenguin reviews Versora's Progression Desktop, and concludes: "Overall, this is a really solid product. It does exactly what it's advertised to do, and it's wrapped in a very user friendly package. At just under $30 per desktop, the price is right too... And it's even cheaper when paired with Linspire Linux 5.0. Whether you love it or hate it, Linspire is the best thing going right now in the Windows desktop replacement market, and paired with a tool such as Versora's Progression Desktop... You simply can't go wrong."
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Red Hat Commits to MIT’s USD100 Laptop

  Submitted by Moule Fedora Core 16 Comments
Fedora Core, a popular flavor of Linux being developed by the open-source community, is hardly hefty by today's operating system standards. But to fit the tight specs for the $100 laptop being designed by MIT's One-Lap-Per-Child group, Fedora will need to go on a crash diet, concedes its overseer, Red Hat. The Linux software maker confirmed today that it has donated $2 million to the OLPC and joined as a corporate member and said it plans to put some of its brightest engineers to the task of slimming down Fedora before the laptops debut in early 2007.
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Fyodor Releases nmap 4

  Submitted by Hulk Privacy, Security 8 Comments
After two years of work, since the 3.50 release, Fyodor announced the Nmap Security Scanner version 4.00. Changes since version 3.50 include a rewritten (for speed and memory efficiency) port scanning engine, ARP scanning, a brand new man page and install guide, runtime interaction, massive version detection improvements, MAC address spoofing, increased Windows performance, 500 new OS detection fingerprints, and completion time estimates. Dozens of other important changes - and future plans for Nmap - are listed in the release announcement. Fyodor also gave an interview on 4.00.
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Google Denies Plans to Distribute OS Based on Ubuntu

Google 36 Comments
"A post on the Register, claiming that Google might be close to rolling out a 'Goobuntu' Linux desktop distro, has been making the usual rounds in the tech news circuit today. Despite today being earnings release day, presumably a very busy time at the Google press relations office, technology spokeswoman Sonya Boralv responded very quickly to my query on the topic. She said that "e use Ubuntu internally but have no plans to distribute it outside of the company." Elsewhere, Google's shares kinda dropped today as their earnings fell short of expectations.
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Novell Shows Off Linux Desktop 10

Novell and Ximian 171 Comments
A demonstration of the next release of Novell's Linux for desktops drew cheers and applause Wednesday, although the final version of the software is not expected for some months. Nat Friedman, the company's vice president of Linux desktop engineering, showed Novell Linux Desktop 10 playing videos and MP3 music files, and exchanging music and photos with an iPod and a digital camera, in a keynote presentation at the Solutions Linux conference and trade show on the outskirts of Paris.
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Apple and AMD: a Match Not Meant to Be

Apple 41 Comments
"AMD has been a leader in getting 64-bit technology off the PowerPoint and into servers, desktops, and wherever else they can put it and has a clear-cut technology advantage over most of the current crop of Intel processors. For a company that likes to 'Think Different', Apple chose a conservative path in selecting Intel processors to power its latest generation of computers." In related news, our favourite Windows Apple fanatic Paul Thurrot wonders why there's no PC equivelant of Apple's iLife.
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PC Industry Looks to Transform Firmware

Hardware 39 Comments
PC firmware, a murky world of interwoven software code that dates back to the original IBM PC and its clones, is about to be modernized. In a move that experts say promises to lead to fewer headaches for IT staff by creating more stable and manageable desktops and notebooks, the PC industry has begun transitioning to the United Extensible Firmware Interface. Dubbed UEFI, the interface offers a standardized way for a PC's firmware, the underlying software that controls its hardware, to interact with the operating system. The new interface offers a standard method for loading an operating system, as well as running pre-boot applications.
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MS Releases IE 7 Beta 2 to Public

  Submitted by Jason Scalia Internet Explorer 51 Comments
Microsoft has released the 2nd beta of Internet Explorer 7 to the general public. You can read the release notes, or watch a tour of the new features. Microsoft warns you not to use this beta a production environment: "Evaluation of Internet Explorer 7 should start now, but the software should not be used on production systems in mission-critical environments. Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview will only run on Windows XP Service Pack 2 systems, but will ultimately be available for Windows Vista, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003." Update: You might have been expecting this, but there's already a DoS attack out there for this new beta.
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AROS January Update

  Submitted by wonea Amiga & AROS 2 Comments
The AROS team has posted their first update of 2006. "Georg Steger has fixed input preferences for mouse, in order to improve mice tracking and pointer precision on the screen. Mathias Rustler has updated documentation for users and developers, adding some nice hints and removing obsolete informations. You'll find signs of his work through this site. Mathias has also commited ExecuteStartup, a little tool that executes whatever application you'll copy in the SYS:WBstartup drawer. Thanks to Nick Andrews and Jack Patton AROS has got IRC and Telnet clients. In order to enable networking on hosted version of AROS, Michal Schulz has commited a .tap interface hidd for all Unix targets."
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KOffice 1.5 Beta Released

  Submitted by jaboua KDE 19 Comments
"The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice 1.5 beta 1, the first preview release for KOffice 1.5, scheduled for release this March. KOffice is an integrated office suite with more components than any other suite in existence. Never before has a new version of KOffice brought this many exciting new features including Kexi 1.0 and the first release of project management application KPlato. Read the full announcement and the changelog for more details or read on for the full article."
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SGI Gets a New CEO

  Submitted by milatchi SGI and IRIX 20 Comments
"Silicon Graphics announced today that Dennis McKenna has been named chairman of the board, chief executive officer and president, effective immediately. McKenna succeeds Robert Bishop, who will remain on the board of directors and serve as vice chairman. "Dennis McKenna is a proven leader, with an established track record of driving positive results in difficult business environments. He is well balanced in strategy, business development and operational execution - a combination that we believe will bring improved results to SGI and its stakeholders," said James McDivitt, SGI's lead director." Update: El Reg has more on this.
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Announcing the Mustang Regressions Challenge

  Submitted by robogeek Java 2 Comments
"We are challenging you, the Java developer community, to find functional regressions between J2SE 5.0 (Tiger) and Java SE 6 (Mustang). The contest runs from Jan 31 through March 31, 2006, with prizes to be awarded in mid-April. You will find details on the contest home page and FAQ. The complete entry requirements are in the official legal rules governing the contest. You can enter the contest using the contest entry form. Prizes? There are five Ultra 20 workstations which will be awarded to the best regressions found during the contest. In addition all successful entrants, whose regression is entered into Suns internal database, will be given a t-shirt as our thanks to you for participating."
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Tax Man Uses Special Computer for Bill Gates

  Submitted by sean batten Microsoft 32 Comments
Bill Gates has revealed that the US taxman cannot process his tax return on its standard computers. Speaking to a Microsoft conference in Lisbon, Bill said that his fortune was too large and pendulous for the tax office computers. Apparently they just run screaming when they see his bulky dossiers. The tax office have had to splash out on a special computer that can accomodate all those 00000000s without squealing like a pig.
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Apple Makes the Switch: iMac G5 vs. iMac Core Duo

Apple 35 Comments
AnandTech has written a long and in-depth review of the new Intel iMac (16 pages). They conclude: "I like the iMac, I like it a lot. It's a computer that can look and work as well in a kitchen as it can in an office, and that's one thing that Apple has done very right with this platform. It took me this long to look at it, but I think it could quite possibly be Apple's strongest offering as it accomplishes exactly what they are trying to do - which is build lifestyle computers."
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Google Rep to Speak at SCALE 4x about Linux Desktop Issues

  Submitted by anonymous Google 26 Comments
Google's Dan Kegel will be keynoting at the 2006 Southern California Linux Expo on Feb 12th. He will be giving a presentation titled "Why doesn't Johnny run Linux? Or, Overcoming Desktop Obstacles". Dan will go over some of the main issues identified by the recent Desktop Linux Survey and Desktop Linux Architects' meeting at OSDL, as well as his own list of issues, and what's being done to solve them. This is interesting with regard to El Reg's story on 'Goobuntu'. Elsewhere, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols doesn't believe the rumours.
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UK Linux Guru Backs GPL 3

Linux 45 Comments
Alan Cox, a leading UK Linux developer, has expressed his support for the next version of the General Public License. His viewpoint is in direct contradiction to Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux, who said last week that he won't convert Linux to GPL 3 as he objects to its proposed digital rights management provisions. Cox said that the DRM provisions "don't really matter" to the Linux kernel as DRM is generally used by applications.
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