Linux News for Jan 31, 2008

• Why Companies Don't Support Debian (Jan 31, 2008, 23:30)
  Linux-Watch: "At a recent Australian Linux conference, Sam Varghese reported that two Debian developers pointed out that the Debian Project needs more corporate support for 'men, money and machines' to advance the operating system..."


• 25 Years Ago: Free, Easy, Software Begins (Jan 31, 2008, 22:00)
  PC World: "He was already something of a celebrity in the wider world of personal computing as the father of 'freeware,' a concept that he had popularized, starting in late 1982, with the release of his trailblazing communications program, called PC-Talk..."


• Motorola Responds to Nokia's Trolltech Buy (Jan 31, 2008, 20:30)
  LinuxDevices: "Motorola has responded to the news earlier this week that rival Nokia plans to purchase Trolltech, long-time supplier of the graphical development framework used in Motorola's Linux phones..."


• Interview With Mandriva CEO, François Bancilhon (Jan 31, 2008, 19:00)
  Linux Journal: "Linux Journal recently caught up with Mandriva CEO, François Bancilhon, to find out more about a recently announced partnership between Mandriva of France and Turbolinux of Japan..."


• Firefox Flaw Re-Rated as High Severity (Jan 31, 2008, 18:15)
  iTWire: "A Firefox security flaw originally judged to be of low severity has been upgraded to high, but a fix is on its way..."


• Linspire Offers Custom Linux Builds (Jan 31, 2008, 17:30)
  vnunet: "Linspire, developer of the commercial Linspire and Freespire flavours of community desktop operating systems, is to offer a custom desktop Linux OS build service to partners..."


• Google and Dell Tipped to Reveal iPhone Rival Plans (Jan 31, 2008, 16:45)
  Marketing Week: "Speculation is mounting that Google is plotting the launch of a mobile phone in partnership with computer giant Dell..."


• Tracking the Man with the Gavel: Alex Brown on the BRM (Jan 31, 2008, 16:00)
  ConsortiumInfo: "As many of you are aware, Alex Brown will be the 'Convenor' of the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting that will run from February 25 through 29 in Geneva, Switzerland..."


• SCO's 10K: Now What? Caveat Emptor (Jan 31, 2008, 15:15)
  Groklaw: "SCO has filed its 10K Annual Report for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2007. What a year it has been. They are down to 115 employees as of that date. Probably less now..."


• Renault in Linux Deal with Microsoft, Novell (Jan 31, 2008, 14:30)
  InfoWorld: "Microsoft will deliver more than 1,000 support subscription certificates for Suse Linux Enterprise Server to French automaker Renault, under an agreement announced by Microsoft and Novell on Wednesday..."


• Torvalds' Linux is Ready to Go Green (Jan 31, 2008, 13:45)
  ZDNet Australia: "The infrastructure and tools required to make Linux a green operating system are now in place, according to Linus Torvalds, who was in Melbourne this week attending Australia's largest Linux conference..."


• 2008's Top Leaders in Open Source Business (Jan 31, 2008, 13:00)
  LinuxWorld: "According to an IDC report, Open Source Software Business Models 2007-2011 Forecast: A Preliminary View, worldwide open source-related revenue reached $1.8 billion in 2006 and will grow to reach $5.8 billion by 2011..."


• Open Aerial Map Project is Collecting Free Data (Jan 31, 2008, 12:15)
  Linux.com: "The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project is well on its way to producing a free, user-editable street-level vector map of the world..."


• A Better ext4 Filesystem for Linux (Jan 31, 2008, 11:30)
  LinuxWorld: "A new Linux filesystem gets rid of the 256-petabyte limit, and adds a checksum feature for the journal. But developers want you to know that it's not yet ready for production systems..."


• SLAX on USB Drive (Jan 31, 2008, 10:45)
  PolishLinux: "Such a stick is more than enough for a light Linux distro leaving a lot of space for other data..."


• Bordeaux WineTricks Manager 0.3 Released (Jan 31, 2008, 10:00)
  Wine Review: "This is the third release (0.3) of Bordeaux, this release has many fixes and improvements over the 0.2 release..."


• Over the Air Software Customization for Linux Mobile (Jan 31, 2008, 09:15)
  DaniWeb: "A specialist mobile software management company, Red Bend Software, has today announced what it claims to be the first Linux based mobile phone complete with fully over the air customizable software..."


• Core Driver Patches in the 2.6.25 Merge Window (Jan 31, 2008, 08:30)
  KernelTrap: Prefacing a series of 196 patches, Greg KH noted, 'due to the low level nature of these patches, and because they touch so many different parts of the kernel, a number of the subsystem maintainers have asked me to get them in first to make merging other trees easier..."


• R500 XAA/EXA Benchmarks Of RadeonHD Driver (Jan 31, 2008, 07:00)
  Phoronix: "The public release of AMD's 'tcore' sample code is imminent, thereby steering the open-source development efforts toward R600 2D acceleration and the basis of the 3D support for the RadeonHD driver..."


• 77 Useful Linux Commands and Utilities (Jan 31, 2008, 05:30)
  SearchEnterpriseLinux: "Linux administrators cannot live by the GUI alone. That's why we've compiled the most essential Linux commands into this convenient guide..."


• The Essence of Choice (Jan 31, 2008, 04:00)
  Raiden's Realm: "Over the years, I've had people ask me many times, 'Why do you use this program or that program? Why not use Microsoft instead like everyone else...?'"


• Open Source Valuations, Competition, Downloads, and Profitability (Jan 31, 2008, 03:15)
  Socialized Software: "And on goes my fascination with open source companies and their valuations..."


• Sun's Best Buy Ever: MySQL (Jan 31, 2008, 02:30)
  eWeek: "Some people can't believe Sun actually spent a billion dollars for MySQL; I can't believe they got such a great deal..."


• Nokia: $150M to the Trolltech Under the Bridge (Jan 31, 2008, 01:45)
  tecosystems: "Surprisingly, Nokia's acquisition of Trolltech has elicited the least inbound inquiry of all the recent open source M&A activity..."


• HP--Community-Serving or Self-Serving? (Jan 31, 2008, 01:00)
  Enterprise Unix Roundup: "Putting aside, for a moment, the trend surrounding the notion of finding open source in your organization seems to have been elevated to--at the very least--the level of getting cooties, why is HP offering this service...?"


• Denying CDF: "There Be Dragons" (Jan 31, 2008, 00:15)
  PlexNex: "The industry of denial of the importance of the W3C's Compound Document Format is going to be a Sisyphean ordeal for the blindered ODF & OOXML choruses..."