Linux PaPa writes "LinuxHardware.org has just posted a great new review on the current state of ATI drivers under Linux. The review is specifically a look at the Connect3D's Radeon X800 and it exposes many of ATI's current problems in their latest drivers. While the drivers seem to have plenty of speed to them now, some stuff still just doesn't work."

miketronics writes "Linspire Five-O is a full-featured Linux operating system which is intended for desktop use, mainly as an alternative to Windows XP. XYZComputing has a review of the latest version. The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotten a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers." From the article: "Once the installation is over with Five-O is ready to go. The first time the OS is used Linspire's tutorial program will activate. This is one of most accessible tutorials on any Linux distro and it should be a great help to new users. Though it does not go into extreme depth, it does give the user enough understanding of the OS to get started. Even if you are a Linux pro it will probably be helpful to check out the CNR section, as this system is unique to Linspire. The fact that the developers have the tutorial voice-narrated shows Linspire's commitment to user support -- this feature makes the otherwise boring tutorial watchable."

An anonymous reader writes "Releasing the 2.6.13-rc4 Linux Kernel, Linus Torvalds announced an improved development process to try and minimize the number of bugs in the kernel. The general idea is simple: changes will only be allowed for two weeks after the release of a stable kernel. All the rest of the time between releases will be spent on fixing bugs. This should improve upon last year's development module, which allows for active development in the 2.6 stable kernel."

ewhac writes "Tapwave, makers of the universally acclaimed Zodiac mobile gaming device/media player/PalmOS PDA formally announced on their Web site that, 'the Zodiac business was discontinued and service and support are no longer available as of July 25th 2005.' The Zodiac was a PalmOS 5.2 device with gaming and media features, including ATI graphics and Yamaha sound acceleration, proportional joystick, two SD slots, Bluetooth, 200MHz ARM CPU (Freescale i.MX1), and up to 128M of RAM. At the most recent Palm developer conference, Tapwave employees were showing Zodiacs running their own port of Linux 2.6.10, with ports of SDL, Python, PyGame, mpg123, and primitive power management. It is unknown what will become of this work."

prostoalex writes "InfoWorld reports that despite warming to the OS, Microsoft won't be releasing its own distribution of Linux any time soon. From the article: "Hilf acknowledged that Microsoft's commitment to Windows does not preclude the company from continuing a strategy he has led in his 19 months at the software vendor: To see how Microsoft's proprietary technologies can better interoperate with Linux and a host of other open-source software. In fact, that is exactly what will be the focus of a discussion the long-time open-source proponent will lead at this year's upcoming Linuxworld Conference & Expo next month in San Francisco. In a session entitled, 'Managing Linux in a Mixed Environment ... at Microsoft?' Hilf, who polished his open-source evangelism skills working on Linux deployments at IBM Corp., will talk about how he and the team at the Linux/Open Source lab run open source technologies in "the most Microsoft-centric IT environment on the planet." "

TractorJector writes "In a well-written interview with Mad Penguin, techmeister Leo Laporte (formerly of G4/TechTV fame) discusses his vision of the future of proprietary and open platforms: 'I think there's a lot of hope for Linux, although I don't think that Linux is the answer. I think that UNIX is the answer, in some form or fashion. It might be BSD, it might be Linux, it might be some third thing. But UNIX is such a well understood and smart to handle the issues that an operating system has to handle that it ultimately will prevail.'"

cdlu writes "This year's Ottawa Linux Symposium was well-attended and hosted numerous very interesting discussions. There's extensive coverage at NewsForge: (comprehensive day 1, day 2, day 3, and day 4, Linux Weekly News (subscription): A challenge for developers, Linux and trusted computing, and Xen and UML, and O'Reilly network: First day and Wrap up."

robinsrowe writes "Most of the major studios use Linux -- such as DreamWorks with more than 1,500 Linux desktops and 3,500 Linux servers. The MovieEditor Conference is an all-day event on computer-based filmmaking in downtown Los Angeles on August 3rd. Studio technology chiefs and other experts discuss ongoing work using Linux in feature animation and visual effects. Presented in collaboration with LinuxMovies.org."

Pascal Klein writes "William Szilveszter, a Gnome desktop artist has recently released an extensive suite of goodies for our Gnome desktops, including a GTK theme, Firefox and Thunderbird themes, an extensive icon set and 2 media player skins, as well as a high in demand wallpaper. His Graphic Suite, on Gnome-Look.org has become the most highly rated contribution to the Gnome-Look.org community in just under 5 days, and has scored over 4900 downloads to date.

Wombat has interviewed him in light of his recent release... You can find the interview here."

tr_x_data writes "There is a quite interesting KDE 3.5 preview with screenshots on JLP's Blog. I thought there wouldn't be so much improvement to KDE 3.4 since everyone is working on porting KDE4 to QT4, but obviously there are quite a few changes. Look forward to "Storage Media Notification", "Adblock" for Konqueror, new Tooltips, better Workspace-Pager, and so on. Read for yourself."

An anonymous reader submits "LinuxCare, famous employer of Rasmus, Tridge, and others during the go-go-90's Linux start-up days, has resurfaced as a Linux device vendor. The company, now known as Levanta, is shipping its first hardware product, which it says is the 'world's first Linux management appliance.' At nearly $8K, it's pretty expensive, but the Integra M does appear to bring some of the cool sysadmin features long available on the Windows side over to Linux IT types."

prostoalex writes "Nokia's experiment with N770 prototype device and its own Linux-based dev platform got the folks from ARCchart thinking - Is Nokia ready to jump the Symbian ship and switch to Linux? TechWeb chimes in: "Such a switch by Symbian would make Linux, in one fell swoop, the leading mobile device platform. It already is riding a wave with PalmSource's decision to port the Palm OS to Linux and a defection by Nokia would seal the deal.""

polar_bear` writes "Last week, CodeWeavers issued a "Installer Challenge" to improve Wine "until it can run nearly every Windows program." Linux Magazine interviewed CodeWeavers Founder and CEO Jeremy White about the challenge, Wine on OS X on Intel, the Linux desktop and what is ahead for CodeWeavers. White has some pretty interesting answers."

linuxbeta writes "Distrowatch is reporting that 'The beta testing process for Mandriva Linux 2006 is now officially underway. All the new features, which are not yet all included in this first beta version, will appear in the next test versions. You will see changes in the network management, especially WiFi, in security, on the desktop with the new versions of KDE, GNOME, new version of the kernel, GCC....'. Screenshots are available."

fabbe writes "The 6th annual Debian Developers Conference (DebConf) was held in Helsinki, Finland from July 10th to July 17th 2005. With over 300 registered participants from around 40 countries, this was the largest DebConf to date. More than 20 sponsors provided DebConf with a total budget of around 125,000 euros. The conference featured talks, workshops, demonstrations, coding marathons and round table discussions on various aspects of the Debian Project. The presentations were captured by the DebConf5 Video Team and are available online at at Debian's site. "

JuiceMan wrote to mention an article that goes into the the specifics of setting up a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) using Linux and a few easy scripts. From the article: "Wireless clients will have questions, and the Linux-based management tools I'll discuss will help you answer them. Here are some quick examples of how you can answer typical user questions - Question: 'Is the Internet down today? Why can't my browser find www.flakyhost.com?' Solution: First, check your wireless network with the scanap script; it will tell you about the wireless signal quality of all associated clients, including the one that's giving you problems. Then, check IP connectivity with the pingall script; it will tell you about the latency to your ISP's gateway, the DNS, and all your clients, including the problematic one. If these two scripts establish that your network is OK, try www.flakyhost.com."

Colmao writes "Investor's Business Daily wrote up an article interviewing Martin Fink, the head of HP's NonStop Unit. From the article'In a move that suggests Linux is finally ready for prime time, Hewlett-Packard is giving the free software a bigger role on some of its toughest servers.' NonStop servers are HP's most costly machines. They are designed to be always on, mission critical appliances. They are used to run some of the world's stock markets. Linux is making big moves in the datacenter and getting some much needed exposure."

aword writes "Computerworld cites that private financial services sector have moved to Linux more than any other sector. This too is mostly on the server side only. Enterprisewide linux deployments for desktop users have been few and far between. From the article." From the article: "On the server side, perhaps no single industry has tested Linux's enterprise mettle more than the financial services sector. Companies were facing mounting pressure to cut costs at the turn of the millennium. The Internet bubble was about to burst. Prices were fluctuating wildly. Order volume and data traffic were spiking in the wake of the electronic trading boom. Revenue was not."

matthewg writes "According to the New York Times the federal government has developed an open-source medical records system. It was originally developed for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and doctors started obtaining it under FOIA requests. Some good information on the process of converting it from an internal project to a deployable system exists, and how its open nature has made the system better is available at the WorldVista site." From the article: "Medicare has not estimated what its software giveaway is worth. But Duncan Pringle, chief Vista technologist at Perot Systems, said that each doctor in a practice paid about $20,000 to $25,000 to get started with a commercial system, including costs of software, a license fee charged to each doctor, installation and servicing."

MacDaffy writes "Microsoft's General Manager of Platform Strategy, Michael Taylor, continues Microsoft's press blitz against Open Source in general and Linux in particular in a CNET Interview. He says of Linux: 'You can build it, design it, and it will work great. The trouble begins when you want to add things to it...(due to) the brittle nature of the platform, when you do that, other things break.'"