Friedman: ‘Flamewars Are Part of the Community Culture’

  Submitted by suka Novell and Ximian 60 Comments
"Nat Friedman has been one of the driving forces behind the development of the Linux desktop for a few year now. First with his own company Ximian, founded together with Mono chief architect Miguel de Icaza, after its acquisition now inside Novell. A few months ago he has been named 'Technologist of the Year' by the VarBusiness magazine for his work around the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Since then he has been promoted to Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Open Source, besides the desktop he is also overseeing Novells server business now. During Novells Brainshare Andreas Proschofsky had the possibility to sit down with Friedman and talk about the Linux desktop, the consequences of the Microsoft agreement and the mistakes of the Hula project."
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Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring RC3 Released

  Submitted by AdamW Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 14 Comments
Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring RC3 'Beijing' is now available. Beijing features fixes to all major bugs in previous betas and release candidates, the final version of GNOME 2.18, and the full feature set intended for the final release. Both traditional installer-based Free editions and combined live/install CD One editions are available. Please consult the release notes for more information.
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NixOS: a Purely Functional Linux Distribution

  Submitted by John Nilsson Linux 27 Comments
"NixOS is a Linux distribution based on Nix, a purely functional package management system. NixOS is an experiment to see if we can build an operating system in which software packages, configuration files, boot scripts and the like are all managed in a purely functional way, that is, they are all built by deterministic functions and they never change after they have been built."
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Servers: ‘It’s the Stack, Stupid!’

  Submitted by WillM OS News 19 Comments
"The server operating system wars never seem to slow down. Last week it was Red Hat's turn with the announcement of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, which incorporates the Xen open source hypervisor. Naturally there's also the endless market speculation about the final feature set and likely arrival date of Windows Server 2007. And then there's Solaris, which with its nice value-add features like DTrace and its new status as open source software is making something of a comeback, it seems."
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Building DVD Images of Ubuntu Repositories

  Submitted by falko Ubuntu 16 Comments
"This howto offers a simple way of creating DVD images of Debian or Ubuntu http/ftp repositories. Ubuntu doesn't offer DVDs ready to download with its main, universe, multiverse and/or restricted repositories. With the contents of this howto you can do it yourself. Having the Ubuntu or Debian repositories on DVD can be useful for those users who don't have access to the Internet where they have their Ubuntu installed but have access somewhere else to download the repository and build and burn the DVDs."
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Haiku: Where Are We At

  Submitted by TJ Haiku 56 Comments
"With Haiku getting closer and closer to an R1 release I think it is time for little review on the achievements of the development team in the last months. Haiku is being covered on various websites and blogs lately especially after attending SCaLE and the already famous tech talk at Google. But although it might seem that Haiku is only weeks away from the so important first release there is still a lot of work that has to be done, networking being the biggest." More here.
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‘What Apple Gets Right and Why Linux Keeps Slipping Behind’

  Submitted by theosib Linux 169 Comments
The founder of the Open Graphics Project writes: "Good design and usability are very important. I haven't paid enough attention to the discussions between Linus and GNOME developers, so I can't address it directly. But what I can say is that a learning curve is not a bad thing. While it's good to think about the total novice, it's even more important to have consistent and logical mechanisms. This way, if someone has to learn something new to use the computer, they have to learn it only once. This is why I think it's good that Apple and Microsoft have UI development guides that encourage developers to make their apps act consistently with other apps in areas where their functionalities conceptually overlap. And this is where I start to get disappointed with GNU/X11/Linux systems."
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2006 Operating System Vulnerability Summary

  Submitted by Robert Escue Privacy, Security 17 Comments
In this article, Matthew uses nmap and nessus against actual installs of various operating systems as part of his research. A variety of operating sytems were tested including Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista Ultimate, MacOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, Fedora Core, and Slackware. "As far as 'straight-out-of-box' conditions go, both Windows and OS X are ripe with remotely accessible vulnerabilities. Even before enabling the servers, Windows based machines contain numerous exploitable holes allowing attackers to not only access the system but also execute arbitrary code. Both OS X and Windows were susceptible to additional vulnerabilities after enabling the built-in services. Once patched, however, both companies support a product that is secure, at least from the outside. The UNIX and Linux variants present a much more robust exterior to the outside. Even when the pre-configured server binaries are enabled, each system generally maintained its integrity against remote attacks."
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OpenOffice.org 2.2.0 Released

  Submitted by shykid Office 60 Comments
"The OpenOffice.org Community announce the release of OpenOffice.org 2.2, the latest version of the leading open-source office suite. With upgrades to its word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, and database software, the free software package provides a real alternative to Microsoft's recently-released Office 2007 product - and an easier upgrade path for existing Microsoft Office users. OpenOffice.org 2.2 also protects users from newly discovered vulnerabilities, where users' PCs could be open to attack if they opened documents from, or accessed web sites set up by, malicious individuals."
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Solaris JumpStart for x86/x64 Platforms

  Submitted by Robert Escue Solaris 1 Comment
"Sun's Solaris JumpStart technology is used to automate the installation of the Solaris Operating System and other associated software on multiple nodes of a network. Using Solaris JumpStart software on the Solaris 10 OS for x86/x64 platforms is essentially the same as on Solaris 10 OS for SPARC platforms. However, there are some subtle differences that need to be addressed for correct operation. This document provides the steps and explanations necessary to set up a JumpStart server for Solaris 10 on a Sun x86/x64 machine, along with configuring JumpStart for two or more clients."
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Ongoing Investigation Forces Dell to Delay Quarterly Report

Hardware 23 Comments
Dell is delaying the filing of its fourth-quarter financial report as the PC vendor continues an internal investigation into its own accounting and financial practices. In a March 29 statement, the Round Rock, Texas, company revealed that its own internal auditing committee had found a number of accounting errors, evidence of misconduct and deficiencies in the way the company's finances were controlled.
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Microsoft Unlocks Windows Home Server

  Submitted by Dan Warne Windows 68 Comments
As momentum grows around its new Windows Home Server line, which is due for release towards the end of this year, Microsoft is looking to keep the love flowing with its hardware partners, software developers and end users alike. Joel Sider, Senior Program Manager for Windows Home Server, told APC that the company intends to release a software development kit for the platform early next month.
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Murdock Aims to Close Solaris ‘Usability Gap’

  Submitted by Frank Lopez Solaris 37 Comments
Ian Murdock says he drew a lot of puzzled looks from his colleagues in the Linux community when he joined Sun Microsystems in its newly created position of chief operating platforms officer. 'What's a Linux guy doing at Sun?' he was asked. After all, Ian Murdock is the 'Ian' in Debian Linux, the distribution he created with his wife, Deb. Only eight days on his new job, Murdock spoke at a Software Developers Forum Tuesday in Santa Clara, California, where Sun is based. Murdock, 33, outlined what he thinks needs to be done in his new job in an interview with Robert Mullins.
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The GPL Has No (Networked) Future

  Submitted by wakeupneo Open Source 28 Comments
"There are both popular and unpopular ways of circumventing the Free Software Foundation's General Public License. A very unpopular method, we've come to find out, is via promises of patent protection for users of specific software. However, if you're looking to leverage Free Software without completely fulfilling the requirements of the license, a better method would be to exploit the software as a service loophole, which the latest draft of the GPL3 just legalized."
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Microsoft’s Linux Woes

  Submitted by anonymous Microsoft 90 Comments
Software behemoth Microsoft could be one of the biggest losers from proposed license changes to the Linux operating system unveiled Wednesday. That’s a possible outcome of updates to the license pushed by the FSF. The FSF wants to make mutually exclusive pacts such as the Novell-Microsoft open-source agreement a violation of the next iteration of the GNU GPL, the license that governs Linux use. "It is unfortunate that the FSF is attempting to use the GPLv3 to prevent future collaboration among industry leaders to benefit customers," said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s vice president of intellectual property and licensing.
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