http://www.linux-watch.com Keeping an Eye on the Penguin en-us One of India's 28 states plans to distribute 100,000 Linux laptops to students there. It sounds like Tamil Nadu's volume purchasing agent decided to use Linux exclusively after being put off by Microsoft's bundling tactics for academic users. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6504473525.html The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed two more copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of the developers of the Linux-based BusyBox utility suite. The suits allege that Bell Microproducts and SuperMicro Computer each violated redistribution stipulations of the GNU General Public License (GPL). http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7258915032.html Pentaho Corp. has released its Linux-compatible, open source business intelligence (BI) software under a GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2) license. The license applies to the version 2 alpha release of the Pentaho BI Platform, as well as future versions, says the company. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3047618529.html Intel's Atom processor is the talk of Computex. The low-powered x86-based chip is racing to market in a flurry of miniature notebooks, with low-cost desktops and Atom-based iPhones to follow. But, will anyone buy them? Don't http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8856186084.html The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit held on April 8-10 in Austin, Texas, may have been invitation only, but fortunately the LF has posted videos for the rest of us. The videos include keynotes from Red Hat and Sun/MYSQL, and a panel on Linux business strategies. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4363409465.html Linux kernel development is funded mostly by "enterprise" interests; yet, Linux is the top OS in devices and embedded systems. Now, two "embedded" maintainers have been added, and an official "linux-embedded" mailing list launched, to ensure that embedded interests are represented under Linux's meritocratic governance model. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6595005657.html Novell and Red Hat announced upgrades of their Linux-based enterprise distros, featuring improved virtualization and hardware support. In addition, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 SP2 adds a new subscription management tool, while Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2 adds new security, clustering, desktop, and networking features. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3978120932.html As has been widely reported, the maintainers of Debian's OpenSSL packages made some errors recently that have potentially compromised the security of any sshd-equipped system used remotely by Debian users. System administrators may wish to purge authorized_key files of public keys generated since 2006 by affected client machines. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5146618138.html Verizon Wireless has chosen Linux as its mobile phone "platform of choice," it said. Starting with feature phones in 2009, followed by iPhone competitors, Verizon will offer Linux phones compliant with specifications from the Linux Mobile Foundation (LiMO), an international industry group it and seven other companies joined today. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9542476682.html The Fedora project today released a new version of its completely free and redistributable Linux distribution. Showcasing lots of next-generation Red Hat features, Fedora 9 also boasts new features of its own aimed at making the distribution appeal more to newer Linux users. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3048091739.html This paper surveys Linux's suitability for use by owners of very small businesses and the self-employed. It was written by Howard Fosdick, a self-employed database consultant who finds Linux fairly well-suited to his needs, and reckons it has saved him thousands of dollars in recent years. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4206147925.html Sun Microsystems officially launched OpenSolaris (OS) today. Available pre-built as a combo live/install CD, the initial "2008.05" binary distribution download of the OS features a GNOME user interface, highly fault tolerant ZFS root filesystem, IPS package managment, and "DTrace" tuning tools. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8724930569.html Board and chipmaker Via is gearing up toward releasing Linux driver source code and product documentation for its popular x86-compatible chipsets and peripherals. The company has launched a website where Ubuntu 8.04 and SUSE 10 binary graphics drivers can be downloaded, with source code and documentation to follow, it says. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7769257582.html A non-profit organization devoted to Linux training and certification has established an affiliate organization in Italy. The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) says its new LPI-Italia partner will begin hosting exams on May 10, at the upcoming "Open Mind Free Software Meeting" on May 10th in San Giorgio a Cremano, Naples. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7246199440.html HowTo Forge has published a tutorial about setting up a server based on the new Ubuntu 8.04 (aka "Hardy Heron") release from last week. The article describes a base install with Apache, Webalyzer, BIND, Proftpd, MySQL, Courier POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, and other packages aimed at web http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7117032530.html A company providing software license compliance management tools has agreed to purchase a company providing online search tools aimed at helping developers find reusable open source software. Black Duck Software says its buy-out of Koders will bring improvements to the search technology in both companies' products. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9118773860.html Registration is open for the tenth annual edition of OSCON (Open Source Convention), as well as for a co-located Ubuntu Live conference. Scheduled for Jul. 21-25 in Portland, Ore., O'Reilly's OSCON 2008 is expected to draw some 2,500 open source experts, visionaries, and hackers. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8272851741.html Review -- Canonical has marshaled the best of what the open-source world has to offer in Ubuntu 8.04, a Linux-based operating system that's capable of mounting a serious challenge to Microsoft Windows on mainstream desktops and notebooks. During my tests http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7226290568.html Brazil's Ministry of Education ("MEC") is installing Linux in labs used by 52 million schoolchildren, reports KDE developer Mauricio Piacentini. Piacentini's blog post describes MEC's "Linux Educacional 2.0" as "a very clean Debian-based distribution, with KDE 3.5, KDE-Edu, KDE-Games, and some tools developed by the project." http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9016897370.html Vyatta has started shipping a major upgrade to its free Linux distribution for x86-based routers, firewalls, and VPN servers. The big new change in Vyatta Community Edition 4 (VC4) is a move to the open source Quagga routing protocol implementation, for better scalability and a more Linux-like command-line user interface. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5161674164.html Review--Recently, I came across a blog post about how to install a LiveCD version of Red Hat's upcoming Fedora 9 release onto a USB stick, leaving space on the stick for data to persist between reboots. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8388122807.html Linus Torvalds has annointed a blockbuster new kernel that required some 7.5 megabytes just for its changelog. The 2.6.25 release sets the stage for a war between ARM and x86 for the personal computing environment of the future, while also merging tons of improvements for real-time devices, desktops, and servers. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7627355459.html Opinion--SAN FRANCISCO--When companies such as Adobe, AOL, Eye-Fi, JPMorgan Chase, Sun Telelogic and even Google want a certain something in their Web applications, they go to SitePen, a Web application development shop that does a little support, training and consulting as well. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2131023247.html Opinion--Five years ago, Red Hat sent a shock wave through the Linux community when it announced a new bleeding-edge development pace for its flagship distribution, Red Hat Linux. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5926473962.html An opinion piece at LaptopMag suggests that Linux's "window of opportunity" on the desktop, and especially laptops, has closed. But has it, really? http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2651233763.html