bsk_cw writes "Today, many Linux users are getting blasé about the ease with which they can install Linux. Possibly, they've been spoiled by distributions such as Ubuntu, which is actually easier to install than Windows. Unfortunately, Fedora 9, the latest version of this community edition of Red Hat, was a bit too much of a blast from the past for Computerworld's James Turner." (Except for bits about the installation, the review is actually quite positive.)

BrianGKUAC writes "Fedora 9 has been released as of 10 AM Eastern Time this morning. Release notes can be found here. Some of the more interesting new features include a new package management system, which can be used as an alternative to pup and pirut, known as PackageKit. This release also includes GNOME 2.22 and/or KDE 4.0.3, and Firefox 3 beta 5. Overall, there are a lot of improvements worth looking at, and the Bittorrent seeds are already feeding the release fairly effectively."

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.'"

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.'"

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.'"

Stony Stevenson writes "New Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has hit out at enterprises, bemoaning that billions of dollars are wasted each year because 95% of companies won't share code. Speaking at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco, he said his company must take a larger role in urging enterprises to participate in open source projects and, in some cases, coax code contributions out of companies that have made in-house improvements. He now feels Red Hat should lead the way 'It should be part of Red Hat's job to define development in a new way, and get companies to work together' on shared projects, he said. The joint development projects would be designed to cover non-competitive parts of an industry, with individual companies still focused on their own competitive business applications."

DigDuality writes "With the news that Windows 2008 (recently discussed on Slashdot) will have GUI-less installs and be fully scriptable, that they've opened up their communication protocols for non-commercial usage and are providing a patent covenant (Redhat Responds), and now finally an interesting rumor floating around that Microsoft will be taking on GNU directly. Has Microsoft totally switched gears in how it is approaching the Unix and FOSS sector for direct competition? According to an anonymous email leaked from a Microsoft employee, it seems Microsoft will be developing a framework that will be completely GNU compatible. Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, said on Friday (23 February) that they are aiming to restore a Unix-like environment to its former proprietary glory, at the same time proving that Microsoft is committed to interoperability. Ballmer emphasized that Microsoft's new strategy is to provide users with a complete package, and this includes users who like Unix environments. According to the supposedly leaked email, UNG, which stands for UNG's not GNU, is set to be released late 2009."

mjasay writes "Red Hat just got a new CEO, Jim Whitehurst, but based on a recent CNET interview with him, he's cut from the same cloth as Matthew Szulik, Red Hat's former CEO. He won't buy an iPod because it won't play Ogg Vorbis files. He refused other CEO roles because he 'must have a mission.' He suggests that taking proprietary shortcuts is a fundamentally wrong way to build a software business. And he believes Red Hat should be doing $5 billion, not $500 million. It's a question of operational excellence and on focusing on its core businesses, according to Whitehurst."

Tubs writes "According to MadPenguin.org's latest article, Fedora 8 from Red Hat is a serious threat to Ubuntu. The author writes, "I was never that swept up with past releases of Fedora. There was nothing compelling about it. But for the first time, I cannot help but feel that the Fedora team has been spoon fed an extra helping of Wheaties, which has put them into overdrive with their accessibility efforts."

bearer_of_bad_news points us to a C|net article which states that Matthew Szulik is stepping down as the president and chief executive of Red Hat. Szulik is citing family health reasons, and he plans to remain chairman of the board. Red Hat has indicated that his replacement will be former Delta Airlines COO James Whitehurst. Quoting the article: "On a conference call, Szulik said Whitehurst stood 'head and shoulders' above other candidates interviewed in a recruiting process. He was a programmer earlier in his career and runs four versions of Linux at home." We discussed Szulik's ascension to CEO back in 1999.

jcatcw writes "Health care software vendor McKesson Provider Technologies is focusing on ways to cut IT costs for customers, including hospitals and medical offices. The cure is moving many of McKesson's medical software applications to Linux, which can then be used on less expensive commodity hardware instead of expensive mainframes. A deal with Red Hat allows McKesson to offer its software in a top-to-bottom package for mission-critical hospital IT systems."

Cat in the Hat writes "Fedora 8 has been officially released. Ars Technica has a run-down of what's new in Fedora 8, including the PulseAudio sound daemon, Nodoka visual style, and a new authentication system. 'Another major change in Fedora 8 is the new PolicyKit authentication system that makes authority escalation more secure. Instead of providing root access to an entire program when it needs higher privileges, PolicyKit makes it possible to isolate individual operations that require higher privileges and put them into system services that can be accessed through D-Bus. Another advantage of PolicyKit is that it will give administrators more control over which users and programs have access to individual operations that use escalated privileges.'"

eldavojohn writes "Red Hat has announced their release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, which includes integrated virtualization. Also of note, 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux is also available on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a web service that provides resizeable compute capacity in the cloud. This collaboration makes all the capabilities of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including the Red Hat Network management service, world-class technical support and over 3,400 certified applications, available to customers on Amazon's proven network infrastructure and datacenters.'"

narramissic writes "Red Hat has signed on to Sun's OpenJDK project and agreed to coordinate its own Java development efforts for Linux with the project. Red Hat will align the work it has done on IcedTea (its own implementation of some parts of the Java SE JDK) with OpenJDK. As part of its participation in OpenJDK, Red Hat will eventually create a compatible OpenJDK implementation for its Enterprise Linux distribution and will also use OpenJDK to create a runtime for its JBoss Enterprise Middleware that is optimized for a Linux environment."

AlexGr writes "Jeff Gould raises an interesting question in Interop News: Why does Red Hat tolerate CentOS? The Community ENTerprise Operating System is an identical binary clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (minus the trademarks), compiled from the source code RPMs that Red Hat conveniently provides on its FTP site. It is also completely free, as in beer. CentOS provides no paid support, but it does track Red Hat updates and patches closely, and usually makes them available within a few hours or at most a few days of the upstream provider, which it refers to for legal reasons as "a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor." Free support for CentOS can be found in numerous places around the web, and a few third parties offer modestly priced paid support for those who want it."

walterbyrd writes "Just months after the last nail in SCO's case, and on the same day as Red Hat's brave words about patent intimidation, a company filed the first patent suit against the Linux operating system. IP Innovation LLC filed the claim against Red Hat and Novell over U.S. Patent No. 5,072,412. PJ points out there is prior art here: 'You might recall the patent was used in litigation against Apple in April 2007, and Beta News reported at the time that it's a 1991 Xerox PARC patent. But Ars Technica provided the detail that it references earlier patents going back to 1984.'"

mrcgran writes "Eweek is reporting on Red Hat's assurances that can continue to deploy Linux without fear of legal retribution from Microsoft. This, despite the increasingly vocal threats emanating from Redmond. 'In a scathing response to Ballmer's remarks, Red Hat's IP team said the reality is that the community development approach of free and open-source code represents a healthy development paradigm, which, when viewed from the perspective of pending lawsuits related to intellectual property, is at least as safe as proprietary software. "We are also aware of no patent lawsuit against Linux. Ever. Anywhere," the team said in a blog posting.'"

jpatokal writes "Singapore Airlines will be rolling out the A380 superjumbo on October 26th, and a surprise awaits in the seat of every passenger: their personal Linux PC, running Red Hat. In addition to running the in-flight entertainment, passengers can also use a full copy of StarOffice, and there's a USB slot for importing/exporting documents or plugging in your own keyboard/mouse. Screen size is 10.6" (1280x768) in economy, 15.4" in business and a whopping 23" in first class (along with free noise-canceling headphones). The system is already available on current B777-300ER planes and will also be outfitted on the upcoming B787 Dreamliners."

juanignaciosl writes "The first beta of Red Hat Developer Studio was published yesterday. RHDS seems promising. This IDE is a bunch of Eclipse plugins that comes from the fusion of JBoss IDE and Exadel Studio. The main advantages it offers are: JSF development improved, in particular integrating RichFaces and Ajax4JSF libraries; Seam (next J2EE middleware standard?) integration; and plugins for JBoss, Hibernate... Here are my first impressions."

head_dunce writes "It looks like Red Hat is going to release their Global Desktop Linux in September and give Ubuntu a challenge for the Linux desktop market. Red Hat Global Desktop 'would be sold with a one-year subscription to security updates.'" It looks like another choice for the proverbial Aunt Tillie. The release is being delayed in order to provide greater media compatibility, "to permit users to view a wide range of video formats on their computers."