sebFlyte writes "MIT's Media Lab has written to the Brazillian government (who is looking into a method to get its citizens cheap, high quality PCs) and has urged them to use Linux. From the article: 'Free software is far better on the dimensions of cost, power and quality...if the source code is proprietary, it is hidden from the general population. This robs them of a tremendous source for learning.'"

diegocgteleline.es writes "Larry McVoy, the owner of BitKeeper (also one of the guys behind LMbench) has posted a message to linux-kernel where he announces a open source client of BitKeeper, which would only allow synching against BK trees. It looks like it's licensed under the NWL (No Whining License) that will force you to 'not whine about this product or any other products from BitMover, Inc.'"

daria42 writes "The lack of a new stable release of Debian GNU/Linux since July 2002 is fuelling the campaigns of many candidates for the project's Debian Project Leader role, with many pushing for a shorter and more stable release cycle to stop Linux users heading for greener and more updated pastures."

dirvish asks: "I am trying to break into the Linux Server Administration field so I have been doing quite a bit of studying lately. I figured while I am studying the subject I might as well work towards a related certification. I am leaning towards the Linux Professional Institute Certification. Other certifications I am considering are CompTIAs Linux+ and Red Hats RHCE. So which Linux certification is the best? I would say Red Hat is the most reputable of these three but I am concerned that their certification might be too Red-Hat-centric, and I don't want to be locked into one distro. Which one is the easiest/cheapest to obtain? Which is the mostly highly regarded in the industry? Are there others that I missed?"

andy753421 links to today's announcement of the official release of KDE 3.4, and writes "Several KDE 3.4 based distributions such as ArkLinux and Kubuntu are soon to follow. Features in the release include built in Text to Speech, a revamped trash system, enhanced PDF support and PC to PC synchronization, as well as a new theme. KDE 3.4 weights in at 6,500+ bug fixes, 1,700+ enhancements, and a grand total of 80,000+ contributions." Reader gotr00t adds a link to the KDE download mirror page . Update: 03/16 20:58 GMT by T : mrevell points out an interview with KDE hacker Aaron Seigo in the latest LugRadio, in which Seigo "dispels various myths about KDE and talks about the desktop environment's future."

daria42 writes "Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC."

An anonymous reader writes "Flexbeta.net compares NeroLinux to K3b under Fedora Core 3. The review notices how NeroLinux does nothing with the eye candy while K3b's GUI is no comparison to NeroLinux. The article also mentions how cumbersome it is to navigate through NeroLinux, also taking note of how long each application takes to accomplish burning tasks."

krunchyfrog writes "The first test release of Fedora Core 4 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 1 include previews of GCC 4.0, GNOME 2.10, and KDE 3.4, as well as support for the PowerPC architecture. Please file bugs via Bugzilla, Product Fedora Core, Version fc4test1, so that they are noticed and appropriately classified. Discuss this release on fedora-test-list. -- The BitTorrent link is already there."

smerdyakov writes "In this story posted by Andrew Orlowski of the Register Debian Release manager Steve Langasek has announced that support will be dropped for all but four computer architectures. Among the reasons cited for doing this are improving testing coordination, 'a more limber release process' and ultimately a ('hopefully') shorter release cyle. The main architectures to survive will be Intel x86, AMD64, PowerPC and IA-64." Actually, the story says clearly that this is only a proposal at this point, but it's definitely something to watch.

1sockchuck writes "Fedora is the fastest-growing Linux distribution for web sites, according to new data from Netcraft on the popularity of Linux distros. Red Hat continues to be the most widely-used distro, running twice as many sites as Debian. 'Red Hat seems to have the best of both worlds at the moment: market-leading status for Red Hat Linux, plus the fastest-growing community distribution in Fedora,' the analysis notes."

phenix asks: "With the new release of Novell Linux Desktop, and the upcoming release of Sun JDS3, I am curious to hear how these two suites, and their underlying enterprise infrastructures (JES and OES) compare. Specifically, I am interested in their ease of management/deployment in these areas: directory services, productivity (office) applications, centralized application serving, centralized document storage, groupware, and remote application installation. All of these, of course, without the use of Windows products like Exchange and Windows technologies like Active Directory. Is there a better alternative?"

Agh writes "German company SerNet (founded amongst others by Samba-Team member Volker Lendecke) has a portal for precompiled packages for Suse's and RedHat's Enterprise Distributions (x86 32 and 64bit, s390, and zSeries) as well as Debian sarge and woody: http://www.enterprisesamba.com/ (Heise story here: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/57389) Offered is always the newest stable version of Samba (currently 3.0.11)."

cfelde writes "eWeek reports that Novell launched a major new release of its ZENworks Linux Management software at CeBIT on Friday, with the aim of bringing management of Linux desktops and servers on par with that of Windows desktops and servers. ZENworks 7 Linux Management adds remote control, imaging, hardware and software inventory, a Web console, and ZENworks' automated policy management to make it a full life-cycle management suite."

jimmy_dean writes "The latest issue of The GNOME Journal has just been published. This regularly published online magazine features original content and commentary for and by the GNOME Community. This issue covers some technical articles, including Audio CD Ripping/Burning by Ken Vandine and Simplified Package Management in Ubuntu Hoary by John Meuser. Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.10, we include a tour of 2.10 by Sayamindu Dasgupta and also the evolution of Evolution 2.2 by Jorge O. Castro. Also, art.gnome.org gets a face lift as told by Link Dupont."

ceasol writes "The German company Nero, developers of the award-winning Nero Burning ROM suite for Windows, now release a free version for Linux called NeroLINUX a CD/DVD Burning Software, and include many features from the Windows version. This software is proprietary but free if you registered." The OEM versions of Nero that come with many CD burners aren't sufficient, though; NeroLINUX is free-as-in-beer only if you've registered "a full version of Nero software version 6 or higher," or a "retail version or downloaded version."

MyThoughts writes "The Gentoo UK Developer's Conference is being streamed live today from the University of Salsford, Manchester. Speakers such as Gareth Bult, Daniel Drake, Ian Leitch, and Stephen Bennett will be holding sessions and demonstrations. Starting at around 9:30 UTC, Freematrix Radio will be airing the conference. You can also check out the conference's IRC channel at FreeNode. HiBand: OGG PLS LoBand: OGG PLS"

An anonymous reader submits "Gentoo has announced the launch of Planet Gentoo, a weblog aggregator similar in style to Planet Gnome and Planet Debian. There are some interesting reads on what's going on, what might be going on in the future, and the occasional entertaining troll to liven things up. Worth a read to see what's being cooked up by one of the more innovative distributions, even if you're not a Gentoo user yourself."

Applejack writes "Looks like iPod fever has caught on to Big Blue. IBM has a yet unreleased iPod-based software for rescue, restore, and recovery of failed Windows PCs. I read this description of the software on Amit Singh's blog, whose group at IBM apparently created this stuff. If I understand this correctly (and I think I do), the iPod contains IBM's rescue software along with Linux. A crashed PC boots into Linux from the iPod, after which you get all kinds of rescue & restore functionality ... web browsing and all, even if the PC's drive is totally hosed. All this while the iPod keeps working normally as a music player as it would. The blog has pointers to further information, including a Windows Media demo of the thing. " Should be noted this is not iPod specific; USB devices will do.

daria42 writes "The next version of SuSE, to be shipped in mid-April, will ship with the Xen virtualization software, letting users run multiple versions of the operating system simultaneously, the company said on Thursday. The article says that Red Hat has also begun adding Xen support to Fedora."

sebFlyte notes a zdnet story thats says "Speaking at Queen Mary, University of London, on Monday night, Open Source Developer Labs chief executive Stuart Cohen said the lawsuits [SCO suing everyone in sight over supposed issues with Linux] were "the best thing that ever happened to Linux"'