IT Management Linux News for Mar 13, 2008

• OOXML: Standards for accepting standards (Mar 13, 2008, 23:45)
  ITPro: "In response ECMA presented 1,100 recommendations for changes to the draft. The BRM only found time to discuss and modify 20 per cent of these recommendations. The remaining 900 recommendations were not discussed, and were waved through apparently on trust and without modification, which signals a considerable failure within the standards process."


• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 Beta released (Mar 13, 2008, 23:00)
  Linux-Watch: "Red Hat's next update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 5.2, with major upgrades to the desktop and virtualization, is ready for beta testing. If your business depends on RHEL, you'll want to download this beta to get an idea what your servers are going to be working with in a few months. According to the Red Hat letter making the announcement, the newly renovated RHEL will use the 2.6.18-84.el5 Linux kernel."


• Terminator - Multiple GNOME terminals in one window (Mar 13, 2008, 22:45)
  Ubuntugeek: "This is a project to produce an efficient way of filling a large area of screen space with terminals. This is done by splitting the window into a resizeable grid of terminals. As such, you can produce a very flexible arrangements of terminals for different tasks.


• softwarefreedom.org - Microsoft's Open Specification Promise: No Assurance for (Mar 13, 2008, 22:00)
  Software Freedom Law Center: "Nonetheless, following the close of the ISO-BRM meeting in Geneva, SFLC's clients and colleagues have continued to express uncertainty as to whether the OSP would adequately apply to implementations licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). In response to these requests for clarification, we publicly conclude that the OSP provides no assurance to GPL developers and that it is unsafe to rely upon the OSP for any free software implementation, whether under the GPL or another free software license."


• HOWTO recover deleted files on an ext3 file system (Mar 13, 2008, 21:15)
  Carlo Wood: "If you Google for "undelete ext3", almost every article you find will be users asking if it's possible and the answer is every time: no...However, this is utter nonsense."


• Midgard 1.8.7 "Flying Pancake" released (Mar 13, 2008, 19:45)
  Midgard CMS: "The Midgard Project has released stable, 1.8.7 release version of the Midgard Open Source Content Management System."


• Debian Linux cluster beats supercomputer in tsunami warnings (Mar 13, 2008, 19:00)
  PC World: "The Philippine government's official weather service, PAGASA, has replaced its SGI supercomputer with a clustered Debian Linux system that can process information vital to protection against typhoons, floods, droughts, tsunamis and other wild weather conditions at a fraction of the cost."


• And the best desktop operating system is… (Mar 13, 2008, 18:15)
  Desktop Linux: "For my money, the best desktop operating system is Linux -- MEPIS and OpenSUSE at the top with Ubuntu closing in fast, to be exact. But everyone has their own opinion, and over at PC Magazine some old friends and coworkers of mine decided to compare all the most popular desktop operating systems: Windows XP and Vista, Mac OS X 10.5.1 (Leopard), and Ubuntu 7.10."


• Manage Linux Storage with LVM and Smartctl (Mar 13, 2008, 16:45)
  Enterprise Networking Planet: "LVM creates logical storage volumes, and allows you to increase the size of your volumes painlessly on live filesystems. Smartctl uses your hard disk's built-in Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) to test its health, and to warn you of impending failures. SystemRescueCD and Knoppix CD both include LVM, mdadm, and smartmontools when you need an external repair or management disk."


• Fedora Project Brazil Releases Online Magazine (Mar 13, 2008, 16:00)
  Revista Fedora Brasil: "We are proud to announce the release of the first issue of Revista Fedora Brasil (Fedora Brazil Magazine), an online magazine about Fedora made by Brazilian Ambassadors and Linux community members for those who speak Portuguese."


• We'd love to work with Microsoft (Mar 13, 2008, 15:15)
  Linux Foundation: "We respond to competitive marketing on behalf of the platform, so when competitors are out spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about open source or if there is a general lack of understanding of open-source licensing practices or governance practices, our organization plays a role educating [the] industry and end-users on those issues."


• RadeonHD Driver Introduces Major Changes (Mar 13, 2008, 14:30)
  Phoronix: "Following a period of relative inactivity in the xf86-video-radeonhd git tree over the past few weeks, this afternoon Novell's Egbert Eich had pushed forward 55 changes to this open-source R500/600 driver. The AMD Radeon HD 3400 and 3600 series are now supported and there are a number of other significant changes. The RV620/635 mode-setting support has required the most significant work since the R500 series"


• Update: Novell's SuSE Linux Desktop Strategy (Mar 13, 2008, 13:45)
  The Var Guy: "At first glance, Novell's desktop Linux goals are humble. Novell insiders tell The VAR Guy they'd be pleased if SuSE Linux eventually captures 1 percent of the overall global desktop market. So, how is Novell's desktop strategy performing so far — especially vs. Red Hat and Ubuntu? Here are key clues from two top Novell sources on the subject."


• Photoblogging with Pixelpost (Mar 13, 2008, 13:00)
  Linux.com: "Services like Flickr and Picasa seems like an obvious way to share your photos with the world. But if you are the do-it-yourself type and prefer to share your photos from the convenience of your own server, give Pixelpost a try. This MySQL/PHP-based application allows you to publish a photoblog and tweak it any way you like. Better yet, you can extend Pixelpost's functionality via addons, so you can turn your basic photoblog into a powerful photo publishing platform."


• OSS Traffic Management: Open Road Ahead? (Mar 13, 2008, 10:30)
  LinuxInsider: "Open source software is making its way into the systems that touch our everyday lives, from our banks to the stores where we shop..."


• This is The End My Friend: Negroponte Says XP on XO in 60 Days (Mar 13, 2008, 03:00)
  One Laptop Per Child News: "Negroponte says that a Windows operating system is in the process of being fine-tuned on the XO as we speak. "Microsoft and OLPC are in discussion on how to release it, as well as how to announce," he said. Negroponte added that the Windows operating system should be available on the XO in less than 60 days."