"Do you have trouble accessing data exported from multiple file servers? If so, try using open source implementations of autofs and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, with Network File System Version 3, to access data under the same global mount point. In this article, study and compare five different methods to create a uniform namespace using autofs. A handy table with a comparative evaluation is available to help you choose the best technique for your scenario."

Remember PA Semi? The company has just released, as promised, its first chipset. "They are full 64-bit PPC, support virtualisation, and would do Alitvec but that name is copyrighted by Freescale. Instead they do 'VMA'. The three parts run at a max wattage of 25, 15 and 10W for the 2.0, 1.5 and 1.0GHz parts respectively, with typical wattage listed at 13, 8 and 6W. The individual cores are said to have a 7W max and 4W typical power consumption at 2.0GHz." PA Semi was one of the prime reasons why Ars's John 'Hannibal' Stokes doubted Apple's reasoning for the switch to Intel.

"Microsoft quietly raised last week its per-incident support prices across the board for Windows and Office. Support for Windows XP and Windows Vista now costs USD 59 per incident. Prior to the Vista launch, the per-incident support price for Windows was USD 39. Vista users get their first 90 days of support for no charge. Support for Office XP and Office 2007 now goes for USD 49 per incident, compared to USD 35 per incident prior to the January 30 Windows Vista/Office 2007 retail launch. Office 2007 users also get their first 90 days of support for free."

"GPE Phone Edition is meant to develop and deploy a GTK/GPE based implementation of a LIPS compliant software stack. It contains a set of applications, libraries and documentation to build software to be used for mobile phones and similar devices, also see the press release text for more details"

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is close to be released for OS/2 and eComStation. Release Candidate 1 is available for immediate download in English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Russian and Dutch to all customers of an active Support Agreement for OpenOffice.org for eComStation and IBM OS/2, via their download-area at the Mensys Online Shop.

"At the time, most of us thought Oracle undercutting Red Hat's Linux business with its Unbreakable Linux was a big deal. Would customers flock to Oracle's cut-rate version of RHEL? Would Red Hat be pounded by Larry Ellison's minions? After a few months, the answers appear to be: No, it wasn't a big deal; and no; and no."

Version 1.0 of the LWJGL has been released. "The Lightweight Java Game Library is a solution aimed directly at professional and amateur Java programmers alike to enable commercial quality games to be written in Java. LWJGL provides developers access to high performance crossplatform libraries such as OpenGL and OpenAL allowing for state of the art 3D games and 3D sound. Additionally LWJGL provides access to controllers such as Gamepads, Steering wheel and Joysticks."

After two months of development, Linux 2.6.20 has been released. This release includes two different virtualization implementations: KVM: full-virtualization capabilities using Intel/AMD virtualization extensions and a paravirtualization implementation usable by different hypervisors. Aditionally, 2.6.20 includes PS3 support, a fault injection debugging feature, UDP-lite support, better per-process IO accounting, relative atime, relocatable x86 kernel, some x86 microoptimizations, lockless radix-tree readside, shared pagetables for hugetbl, and many other things. Read the list of changes for details.

Distrowatch did the first review of Foresight Linux 1.0. They conclude: "Overall, despite a few early glitches while installing Foresight Linux 1.0, this distribution has turned out to be very usable system with an excellent package management utility and a unique, web based system configuration manager. It is clearly designed for users who enjoy GNOME and Mono software on their desktops or those who want to try the latest versions of these applications."

"This show features an interview with Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement and the man who put the GNU into GNU/Linux. After introducing the concept of free software, Richard offers some trenchant criticism of two tech superstars: the Lord of Linux, Linus Torvalds, and Apple guru Steve Jobs. From there, we move into a discussion of the impact of free software - and freedom more generally - on the evolution of personal and global consciousness."

"As one of our readers has pointed out to us, the latest (3.5.6) release of the KHTML rendering engine passes all of the tests in our CSS selector testsuite - making the Konqueror 3.5.6 browser the most CSS3-compatible of all. Also in the latest release is the implementation of text-overflow: ellipsis. It really is a shame that only a tiny proportion of web users have access to this excellent browser."

With only 3 weeks until FOSDEM 2007, the staff have published the first batch of interviews with some of their speakers. In this initial round of interviews, Jim Gettys shares his thoughts on the goals of the OLPC project, Federico Mena Quintero, one of GNOME's founders, gives a brief introduction to his speech on profiling desktop applications, and GEGL's main author Oyvind Kolas elaborates a little on the recent resurrection of the GEGL project. More interviews will be posted in the next couple of weeks.

Salon's Scott Rosenberg explains why even small-scale programming projects can take years to complete, one programmer is often better than two, and the meaning of "Rosenberg's Law."

"Future versions of Windows are going to bear little resemblance to what we've heard so far officially - and unofficially - from Microsoft and the individuals who love to leak tidbits about the company. In fact, according to one of my reliable tipsters, the new and reorganized Windows organization, led by Senior Vice President Steven Sinofsky, is trying to wean folks completely off the Windows code names they have been using for the next couple of releases of Windows. Welcome to the brave new world of 'Windows 7' (a boringly named complement to 'Office 14', the successor to Office 2007)." More here.