conan1989 writes to tell us that a recent report from the Standish Group is claiming that open source is costing the traditional software market somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 billion per year in revenue. "MySQL Marten Mickos has often spoken of 'taking a $10 billion market and making it a $3 billion market.' If you consider that open source has taken out $60 billion of traditional software revenues there will be a bloodletting in the proprietary world soon enough. It's a great time to be an open source company."

Francis Giannaros writes "The first beta release for openSUSE 11.0 is now available. Some of the highlights include fast package management, KDE 3.5.9 and 4.0.3, GNOME 2.22.1 and an impressive new installer using Qt4 CSS-like stylesheets. Changes behind the scenes include switching to RPM LZMA payload and making RPMs smaller (faster to download), and quicker to decompress (faster installation)."

An anonymous reader writes "Next month when Fedora 9 is released it will be the first Linux distribution with support for kernel mode-setting, which is (surprisingly) a feature end-users should take note over. Kernel-based modesetting provides a flicker-free boot process, faster and more reliable VT switching, a Linux BSOD, and of most interest is much-improved suspend/resume support! The process of moving the modesetting code from the X.Org video driver into the Linux kernel isn't easy, but it should become official with the Linux 2.6.27 kernel, and the Intel video driver can already use this technology. Phoronix has a preview of kernel-based modesetting covering more of this new Linux feature accompanied by videos showing the dramatic improvements in virtual terminal switching."

According to a post made yesterday to the Fedora announce mailing list, a Fedora 9 preview has been cleared for launch. "This is a Preview release, it is fairly close to what the final product will be like. This is the most critical release for the Fedora community to use and test and report bugs on. This is the last major public release before the final GOLD Fedora 9 release on May 13th (we hope). [...] Live images, KDE Live images, CDs and DVD options are available. http://torrent.fedoraproject.org has a section marked 'F9-Preview.'"

Jeremy Allison - Sam writes "I'm not much for writing blog entries, but I thought Slashdot readers might like to know that Microsoft architects and testers are attending SambaXP and have been giving some wonderful talks on how the protocol document testing works, and on the design of SMB2 in order to work well on WAN links. Really interesting technical stuff. Pinch me, I'm back in 1994 and things are really fun again :-)."

eldavojohn writes "We recently discussed the Linux Foundation's decision to leave desktop Linux alone but Red Hat is also steering clear of that goal. The reason? It's too tough. From the company blog: 'It's worth pointing out what's missing in the list above: we have no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market in the foreseeable future. An explanation: as a public, for-profit company, Red Hat must create products and technologies with an eye on the bottom line, and with desktops this is much harder to do than with servers.'"

LinuxWatch writes "'It's been long promised, but there it is now,' began Linux creator Linus Torvalds, announcing the 2.6.25 Linux kernel. He continued, 'special thanks to Ingo who found and fixed a nasty-looking regression that turned out to not be a regression at all, but an old bug that just had not been triggering as reliably before. That said, that was just the last particular regression fix I was holding things up for, and it's not like there weren't a lot of other fixes too, they just didn't end up being the final things that triggered my particular worries.' There were numerous changes in this revision of the OS. The origins of some of those fixes is detailed in Heise's brief history of this kernel update."

desmondhaynes writes "Is Linux ready for the masses? Is Linux really being targeted towards the 'casual computer user'? Computerworld thinks we're getting there, talking of Linux 'going mainstream 'with Ubuntu. 'If there is a single complaint that is laid at the feet of Linux time and time again, it's that the operating system is too complicated and arcane for casual computer users to tolerate. You can't ask newbies to install device drivers or recompile the kernel, naysayers argue. Of course, many of those criticisms date back to the bad old days, but Ubuntu, the user-friendly distribution sponsored by Mark Shuttleworth's Canonical Ltd., has made a mission out of dispelling such complaints entirely.'"

Linux.com's Joe Barr has an interesting commentary about the recent Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit and the astounding lack of attention for desktop Linux. Now, a great deal of the monetary support driving Linux these days comes from companies with a vested interest in "big iron" but hopefully this won't completely eclipse the rest of the community. "Before I learned that the press was not welcome in any of the working-meetings at the summit on days 2 and 3, I saw and heard rumblings of discontent from more than one ordinary Linux desktop user. One example: a top-ten list of inhibitors to Linux adoption, created by a committee of foundation members, contained nothing at all relating to desktop usage. Nothing. Everything on the list was about back-room usage. Servers. Big iron."

andremachado writes "Two academic management researchers, Siobhán O'Mahony and Fabrizion Ferraro, performed a detailed scientific study about Debian Project governance and social organization from the management perspective. How did a big non-commercial non-paying community evolve to produce some of the most respectable Operating Systems and applications packages available? Organizations without a consensual basis of authority lack an important condition necessary for their survival. Those with directly democratic forms of participation do not tend to scale well and are noted for their difficulty managing complexity and decision-making — all of which can hasten their demise. The Debian Project community designed and evolved a solid governance system since 1993 able to establish shared conceptions of formal authority, leadership, and meritocracy, limited by defined democratic adaptive mechanisms."

desmondhaynes writes "The GIMP team announced today the first release from the 2.5 development series. It is true that this version is unstable, but a little bird told me to give it a try and see what's it capable of. First of all, let me tell you that its interface is quite redesigned and I think that some users will have problems adjusting with it, but that's just my two cents. On the other hand, version 2.5.0 of The GIMP includes some hot new features, like the integration of GEGL (Generic Graphics Library) which will finally get support for higher color depths, more colorspaces and eventually non-destructive editing."

symbolset writes "InternetNews is reporting that Cisco's new Application eXtension Platform turns several models of Cisco switches into Linux application servers. With certified libraries in C, Java and Perl, developers will be able to use a downloadable SDK to build their apps. The AXP server is just another module in a Cisco switch running Cisco's own derivation of a modern Linux distro (Kernel 2.6.x) specifically hardened to run on that particular hardware. Modules will include up to 1.4-GHz Intel Pentiums with 2 GB RAM and a 160 GB hard drive."

spacefiddle writes "Computerworld has an article about a presentation from Gartner analysts in Las Vegas claiming that Windows is 'collapsing', and that Microsoft 'must make radical changes to the operating system or risk becoming a has-been.' Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald provided an analysis of what went wrong with Vista, and what they feel Microsoft can and must do to correct its problems. Larry Dignan of ZDNet has his own take, and while he agrees, he suggests that the downfall of Windows will be slow and drawn-out. As an interesting tangent to this, there's also a story from a few days prior about Ubuntu replacing Windows for a school's library kiosks, getting good performance out of older hardware. '[Network administrator Daniel] Stefyn said he was "pleasantly surprised" to discover that the Kubuntu desktops ran some applications faster with Linux than when they ran on Windows. An additional benefit of Windows' departure from student library terminals saw the students cease 'hacking the setup to install and play games or trash the operating system.'"

eldavojohn writes "RedHat went to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals asking for limits on software patents yesterday. They have not uploaded their full brief yet online, but promise to post it soon. Here's a tidbit: 'Given the litigation risk, some open source companies, including Red Hat, acquire patents for the sole purpose of asserting them defensively in the event they are faced with a future lawsuit. Red Hat also provides open source intellectual property protections through our Open Source Assurance Program that protects our customers and encourages them to deploy with confidence. Our strategy is a prudent one and mitigates the risk of patent lawsuits, but it would be unnecessary if the system itself were fixed.'"

Aron Schatz writes "VIA has announced that they will start a new site (http://linux.via.com.tw — doesn't exist yet) specifically for the development of open source drivers. From their press release: 'Over the following months, VIA will work with the community to enable 2D, 3D and video playback acceleration to ensure the best possible Open Source experience on VIA Processor Platforms. 'To further improve cooperation with the community, VIA will also adhere to a regular quarterly release schedule that is aligned with kernel changes and release of major Linux distributions. In addition, beta releases will be issued on the site as needed, and a bug report and tracking feature will also be integrated.' Nvidia should be next."

Linux.com has an interesting look at Granular Linux, a desktop-oriented distribution that's primary goal is to be easy to use. "With a single CD's worth of included programs, Granular Linux manages to cover a significant portion of normal end user needs, and those applications not already installed can be easily added through Synaptic. The slight problem with video and more serious problem with sound of my machine suggest that Granular is not without its issues, especially when most other distributions work properly on this hardware, but as this is a preview release of version 1.0 I think it can be more or less forgiven. I'd definitely recommend Granular to anyone with an interest in trying out a new distribution. "

ZDOne writes "In a few years' time, almost all businesses will use open source, according to analyst Gartner — which has up to now been fairly cautious, or downright negative, in its previous predictions about community developed software. '"By 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use open source in direct or embedded forms,' predicts a Gartner report, The State of Open Source 2008, which sees a 'stealth' impact for the technology in embedded form: "Users who reject open source for technical, legal or business reasons might find themselves unintentionally using open source despite their opposition.'"

eldavojohn writes "Which companies contribute the most to the Linux kernel? Well, The Linux Foundation released their results and Novell's contributions have gone up 250% (from 3.6% of all contributions to 14.4% of all contributions) to put them at #2 behind Red Hat. This chart also illustrates just how widely Linux is modified by the community and not just a handful of developers/companies. You can find more coverage on blogs and the original report."

billybob2 writes "PolishLinux.org has an extensive screenshot review and commentary on the development version of the Free and Open Source KDE desktop. Highlights include the ability to run any desktop applet prepared for Mac OS X inside Plasma, on-the-fly annotation and rating of files from within the Dolphin file manager. It also has an improved GUI for the Amarok music player, flexible 3D eye candy configuration in KWin, and improved support for both accessing digital cameras via the Solid hardware layer and the DigiKam photo manager."

2muchcoffeeman writes "Adobe announced Monday that it is joining the Linux Foundation and alpha-released a Linux version of its new Adobe Internet Runtime environment, which allows Internet-enabled applications to run on Windows and Mac OS desktops, for Linux. According to Adobe, the alpha version lacks some key features that will be available in the final product and only runs with Sun Java, not GNU Java. Adobe also released an alpha of Flex Builder for Linux Monday."