Kernel release: 2.2.26, Feb 24, 2004

2.2.26 has been released today.
See changelog for full details.

Files added: 2
Files changed: 25
Files removed: 0

A French court has ruled against Linux distributor MandrakeSoft in an intellectual-property dispute with United States-based Hearst Holdings and King Features Syndicate.

The decision could force the Paris-based software company to surrender its trademark and domain names and to pay nearly $90,000 (70,000 euros) in damages to the U.S. companies, holders of the rights to the comic strip character Mandrake the Magician. The comic strip marks its 70th anniversary this year.

MandrakeSoft will be allowed to keep using its name and Web site addresses for the time being, while it appeals the Feb. 13 Paris court decision. The company said the appeals process could continue for another three years.

Also in the hype tube is desktop Linux.

What was Linus Torvalds thinking?

Doesn't he know that being honest and forthright has no place in the world of IT where FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) has been the norm for more than 25 years?

It must have been January's balmy weather in Australia that caused Linux's original designer to say to a scribe from The Australian IT: "It's going to take, literally, five to 10 years before normal users start seeing Linux desktop."

Controversial software seller the SCO Group has launched an online-ordering site for companies that want to use the open-source Linux operating system with SCO's blessing.

The Web site debuted quietly last week. It enables companies that use Linux to purchase a license that covers SCO's Unix System V, portions of which SCO claims were illegally incorporated into the source code of Linux.

Nothing that has been thrown at Microsoft has yet been able to break its monopoly on the client operating system market, where surveys variously suggest it has a 90 per cent to 98 per cent share. On the server side, it still accounts for more than half of server software sales, despite the increasingly popularity of Linux.

For Geer and others this is distressing. That's because the workings of society depend more on computers than ever before - from the card reader we swipe to get into our office to the systems that run the power and telecoms networks to the databases that make sense of our financial transactions.

The argument is that by letting Microsoft become so dominant, we've set ourselves up for "the blue screen of death" of all time - or what one security firm has dubbed the "$100 billion cyber catastrophe".

Fry Inc. has been using Microsoft Corp. software to design, develop and host e-commerce sites during much of the past eight years. But that's expected to change.

The Ann Arbor, Mich., company, whose clients include retailers Eddie Bauer, Crate & Barrel and Brookstone, tomorrow plans to launch a Java-based offering called Open Commerce Platform that carries no licensing fee for the customer. And Fry is happy to run it on freely available open-source technologies such as the Linux operating system, Tomcat application server and Apache Web server.

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