SafeTinspector writes "Yesterday I attended a Novell/HP Linux seminer "Delivering & Deploying Linux Across the Enterprise" Among the boring and expected stuff, the Novell representative had several slides in his presentation claiming that Novell is going to get heavily involved with LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) to bring policy based security and administration to the LTSP similar to those found in Microsoft and Citrix terminal servers--probably through their venerable Zenworks product line. Also heavily hinted at would be an install wizard provided by Novell that would greatly simplify the installation and configuration of LTSP, which is currently quite complex. I can find no hard information about this on LTSP or Novell websites, nor any information within Google newsgroup search. Does anyone know more about this? On a side note, the laptops of both the HP rep and Novell rep were running SuSE Linux Desktop with Ximian XD2 installed and the presentation was made using OpenOffice Presentation."

The Linux-Egypt group recently held an amazingly successful installfest. This event was a milestone both for Linux installfests in general (was it the largest one ever held?) and for Linux in the Arabic world. Alaa Abd El Fatah, one of the organizers, has offered to answer your questions with help from other Linux-Egypt members. We'll post their answers to 10 or 12 of the highest-moderated questions as soon as we get them back.

Joe Barr writes "What with the spate of professionally PR-generated FUD coming out of Redmond about Linux not being open source, or Windows having a lower TCO, and - believe it or not - even a claim that Windows is more reliable, it's good to read about some real world, grass-root results of successful migrations from Windows to Linux. This story at NewsForge takes a look at the Howard County (Maryland) Public Library's roll-out of over 200 public-use PCs, which used to run on Windows and now run on a custom Linux distribution called Lumix."

sirmikester writes "I wrote a term paper for my University of Illinois law class about the enforceability of the GPL. Unlike most of the papers dealing with the GPL, this one was aimed at a primarily non-technical audience. While a little bit rough around the edges, I'm sure it could give all of the non-technical folks out there a look at the GPL, and why its so important to all of us. There is also a powerpoint presentation available of the speech that I gave to the class about the paper. "

An anonymous reader writes "Even if your work doesn't require you to reboot your Linux machine several times a day, waiting for a system to reboot can be a real drag. Enter kexec. Essentially, kexec is a fast reboot feature that lets you reboot to a new Linux kernel -- without having to go through a bootloader. Faster reboot is a benefit even when uptime isn't mission-critical -- and a lifesaver for kernel and system software developers who need to reboot their machines several times a day. Kexec is currently available on the x86 32-bit platform only."

AArnott writes "Ximian has just released beta 1 of its open-source implementation of Microsoft .NET platform. Mono allows .NET applications to run on Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, Windows. Mono 1.0 is slated for release on June 30, 2004." sjanes71 adds "The first 'beta' always gets heaps of attention, and this is the first of three planned for the Mono project. Some of the new features touted for this release that updates Mono v0.31 include a faster interpreter, a global assembly cache, support for the StrongARM and HPPA platforms, generics support in the VM and C# compiler and an early alpha of System.Windows.Forms. C# and .NET is Microsoft's answer to Sun Microsystem's Java platform and Project Mono aims to create the Open Source, cross-platform version of Microsoft's new development environment."

nostriluu writes "I know, some people want their cell phone to just be a cell phone. To those people, I suggest a second hand phone. For those of us who want to cram as much functionality as possible into a device we are going to bother carrying everywhere, there is the promise of the Linux Smartphone. I've had a P800 for over a year now and while it's great (although a brick), I can't wait for a Linux based device to bring the culture of openness and upgradability, as opposed to the intentional obsolesence and $10 for every little utility someone reinvents for "closed" devices."

Jahf writes "Sun is putting out Java Desktop System Release 2. Some overview information is in this article while more technical information about the new management solutions are in this one. Quickly: the desktop environment is essentially the same, though Sun has added support for GIMLET (allows one to change the current input language on a per-window basis), officially supported Japanese and Korean translations, and is including a Java-based online update client. The bigger changes are management items that are normally hidden from the end-user but valuable to the Admin. Configuration Manager allows admins to setup client preferences for remote desktops and 'protect' those settings to create policies. Sun Control Station (the last remaining Sun product from the Cobalt acquisition) can work as a network imaging server, can monitor remote desktops, and can work as a patch server (both by pushing patches out to many desktops and by serving as an online update server for clients who need to pull additional packages)."

prostoalex writes "USA Today notices significant rise of Linux in the high-end enterprise environment. Although it doesn't provide obligatory pretty pictures, the paper mentions the projects at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and NASA. Also if you've missed the New York Times Google article of the day, the expose on John Doerr from Valley's venerable KPCB talks about venture fund investing $12 million in LinuxCare. NYT quote: "That's a freight train I wouldn't want to get in front of," said Mr. Doerr, explaining the importance to having a stake in a Linux-based venture. "Probably get run over.''"

Gudlyf writes "Red Hat announced yesterday that they will be releasing a version of their OS -- dubbed 'Red Hat Desktop' -- targeted at corporations, universities and government agencies, "looking to upgrade their PCs but don't want or need all the features that ship with the latest version of Windows", said Matthew Szulik, Red Hat's chief executive, although it's not targeted at consumers. It will cost on average about $5 a month per machine, with additional support services available."

'It's me' writes "OSNews reviews LinuxCertified's LC2210 laptop, which comes with Xandros Desktop 2.0. That laptop is meant to be 100% certified with Linux, but Xandros seemed to have problems with it (namely there is no "sleep" function, while WiFi was not as robust as users would want it). LinuxCertified said that newer distros should be able to support this laptop with no hickups. The reviewer concludes that this a great purchase, as long as you are more selective over the distro installed."

Chilliwilli asks: "Why are are good distro reviews so few and far between? Every review I've read recently seems to follow this unoriginal pattern. Big cheers about a nice easy graphical install followed by one or two driver problems blamed on hardware manufacturers. Then the rest of the review seems to be everything worked out of the box. Menus contained usual items. Software versions are X, Y and Z. See OSNews for many examples of such reviews. From the reviews I've currently read all distros seem pretty much the same, is there a reliable source for interesting, impartial and full reviews? Are there any guidelines for distro comparisons? What should people really be looking at when reviewing a distribution? I guess the broader question is what sets distros apart?"

zxflash writes "SolidZ.com reports the latest update to KNOPPIX; the popular Linux based OS has just been released. Version 3.4 includes the version 2.6.5 Linux Kernel and improved hardware detection. It can be downloaded from one of the mirrors listed on the KNOPPIX homepage..." rduke15 adds "Koffice has been dropped for space reasons, as well as LaTex. From the forum: 'Download using bittorrent tracker at http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de:6969/. Remember: Leave your bittorrent client running after the download is finished!' And this is the complete list of included packages."

michaelsimms writes "LGP has announced that [ultraviolent FPS] Postal 2: Share the Pain is coming to Linux this summer. Featuring Gary Coleman, Postal 2 is just like Postal Plus, but fully 3D, and with many more ways to get Postal Dude covered in blood and gore! Applications for Beta Testers are now open." The official Running With Scissors press release is delightful, claiming the company "has reached deep into their hairy chest and clutched their cold, cold heart to take pity on the bastard stepchildren of the gaming world", before noting: "'My development guys wanted to finish animating Quentin Tarantino's sequel to The Passion first,' said former altar boy and RWS CEO Vince Desi, 'but when I told 'em this project was for the Linux community, they left Uma up there swingin' in the breeze and grabbed hammer and nails and got right to work.'"

MadFarmAnimalz writes "On the first of May, the Egyptian LUG had the first ever Linux Installfest (check out the photos and for Pete's sake mirror them!) at the Sawy Cultural Center in downtown Cairo. Turnout was absolutely incredible; the hall was maxed out at something between 500 and 1,000 persons for 7 solid hours (not bad considering our geurrilla marketing campaign can't have cost more than 7 or 8 dollars), and we were absolutely swamped!" Read on below for more details.

gnuman99 writes "Debian just released the 4th beta of the new debian-installer, this time for 9 architectures. Some of the improvements include experimental support for the 2.6 kernel, on i386 only. The 2.4 kernel remains the default and recommended kernel for most hardware. Detection of existing operating systems. The following operating systems can be detected and will be added to the boot menu of the installed system: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, GNU Hurd, DOS. Note that by experimental support for 2.6.x kernel simply means that it is experimental in the installer, NOT the actual OS. Debian supported 2.6.x in the Sarge/Sid before 2.6.x was even officially released."

Sxip writes "A recent survey of advanced technology companies indicates that Open Source software is becoming an explicit component in enterprise Information Technology (IT) strategy and architecture. Some nine out of ten respondents include Open Source in their planning."

comforteagle writes "According to this article in InfoWorld, Sun Microsystems is considering open sourcing Solaris by changing licenses to the GPL. What kind of impact would this have on those of you considering opting out of Unix for Linux? Red Hat and others have openly targeted Solaris users to switch." By the end of the article, the change seems rather unlikely to happen, but it's still interesting to see what changes this could bring about.

egburr writes "Well, today is the last day for Red Hat Linux 9. The Fedora Legacy Project is supposed to start legacy support. I am still planning to stick with RHL9, for a while at least. How many others are planning to do the same? How many are switching to Fedora? How many are switching to some other distribution altogether? How many have already switched? For people still using earlier levels of Red Hat Linux (6.x,7.x,8), how well has the Fedora Legacy Project worked for you?"

Lank writes "Kernel developers started discussing the pros and cons of swapping to disk on the Linux Kernel mailing list. KernelTrap has coverage of the story on their homepage. Andrew Morton comments, 'My point is that decreasing the tendency of the kernel to swap stuff out is wrong. You really don't want hundreds of megabytes of BloatyApp's untouched memory floating about in the machine. Get it out on the disk, use the memory for something useful.' Personally, I just try to keep my memory usage below the physical memory in my machine, but I guess that's not always possible..."