Internet Archive

Red Hat is actively talking to Microsoft to improve Linux/Windows interoperability, but says it will only sign an interoperability agreement with Microsoft if it is based entirely on open standards.

"Pidgin 2.0, the latest version of the popular open-source instant messaging client formerly known as Gaim, is now available for download. After months of development and numerous beta releases, Pidgin 2.0 is finally ready. A significant improvement over the current 1.5.x series, Pidgin 2.0 includes several compelling features and usability enhancements. Last year, we looked at the second beta release and concluded that much work still needed to be done. Many of the problems we discovered in the early Gaim 2.0 betas have since been resolved. The official Pidgin 2.0 release, available for download from the Pidgin web site, provides an impressive level of quality and reliability."

The browser wars are over, and now Microsoft, Mozilla and other vendors plan to focus on positioning the browser as a development platform. That was the consensus of a panel of representatives at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo who help develop Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and the Google Reader.

"Xcerion is a Swedish Internet startup whose founders include ex-Microsoft employees Lou Perazzoli and John Connors. The company will make headlines later this year when they officially unveil what they call an "Internet OS" dubbed XIOS that runs in a web browser. We took an early look at the XIOS concept and had the chance to talk about the project with the company's CEO, Daniel Arthursson."

World wide web father Tim Berners-Lee told politicians on Thursday that it's critical to shield his seminal innovation from control by a single company or country. A top priority for policymakers going forward must be "making sure the web itself is the blank sheet, the blank canvas, something that does not constrain the innovation that's around the corner," the knighted engineer told a US House of Representatives panel that writes internet and telecommunications laws.

"This tutorial shows how to set up a fileserver for small and medium enterprises with SME Server 7.1. SME Server is an open-source Linux server distribution (released under the GPL) based on CentOS that can turn a computer into a gateway, firewall, fileserver, printserver, mailserver (including webmail), etc. In this article we will focus on the fileserver aspect of SME Server."

OpenSSH is an important tool that keeps the communication and transfer of information between machines secure. Not only does it provide a secure alternative to common tools like Telnet, FTP, and RCP, it can also act as a transport protocol for other services like Subversion, X Windows System, and rsync. This article shows you how to get the best out of the main tools provided by OpenSSH.

Hackers Crackers have attempted to topple key parts of the internet's backbone, in one of the most significant attacks of recent years. The target was servers that help to direct global internet traffic. In the early hours of Tuesday three key servers were hit by a barrage of data in what is known as a distributed denial-of-service attack. There is no evidence so far of damage, which experts are saying is testament to the robust nature of the internet.

"In the February 2007 survey we received responses from 108810358 sites, an increase of 1.93 million from last month. Apache has a decline of 442K sites this month, and sees its share of the web server market slip by 1.47 percent to 58.7 percent. This is the first time Apache's market share has been below 60 percent since September 2002. Microsoft-IIS gain 935K sites, continuing an advance that has seen Microsoft steadily chip away at what once seemed an insurmountable lead for Apache. In our Feb. 2006 survey, Apache held 68% market share, giving it lead of 47.5% over Windows (20.5% share). In this month's survey, Microsoft's share has improved to 31.0%, narrowing Apache's advantage to 27.7%."

Although Microsoft recently touted the 100 millionth installation of Internet Explorer 7, Web measurement firms said that the new browser is simply being swapped out for older editions and hasn't had an impact on Firefox's continued climb. " January 8th, we had the 100 millionth IE7 installation," said Tony Chor, an IE group program manager, in an entry on the team's blog. "Even more important than installations is usage. According to WebSideStory (the company we use to measure browser usage), as of this week, over 25% of all visitors to sites in the U.S. were using IE7, making IE7 the second most used browser after IE6." While Microsoft had the WebSideStory numbers correct, it didn't tell the whole story, says Geoff Johnston, an analyst with the Web metrics company. " seems to be exclusively at the expense of IE 6," says Johnston. not eating into the Firefox share at all."

Last June a spin-off department of Red Hat, lead by desktop guru Havoc Pennington, announced Mugshot. Originally, Mugshot was in the midst of controversy whether it's a social networking application or not. Apparently, it instead is a "social networking aggregator". In order for this to work, access to third party data is a must.

The Russian site Mobile-Review reviews Nokia's second version of their WebKit web browser (which was derived from WebCore/KHTML). This new unreleased-yet version offers WML support, opening links in new windows, display rotation, saving of any image, password manager, offline browsing, ATOM feed support, FlashLite 2.0 (no, this has no YouTube or other fancy Flash support) and much more. The first smartphones to offer WebKit's 2.0 browser will be the Nokia 6290 and N95 (which they will be running the new Symbian S60 3.1 version) that are scheduled to be released around April '07. If we were allowed for our own share of speculation, we would say that Apple's and Google's upcoming phones will be using a port of this open source browser too.

"While we're waiting for Google to launch its own Google OS (if the rumours are true, of course), I've checked out 10 web operating systems and what they can do. Not many of them feel like finished and fully usable products, but there are some true gems among them. Admit it: you didn't think there were that many WebOSes around, did you?" More here.

BSD and Linux programmers have had a lot of success in creating drivers for new computer hardware in a timely manner, but much of their effort has been without the support of major hardware manufacturers. Intel, Marvell, Texas Instruments and Broadcom, though separate and competing entities, seem by one consent to prevent non-Microsoft operating systems from working properly with some of their most widely-used network chips.