Red Hat to focus on core products and service, says new CEO, Jan 25, 2008

Red Hat's new CEO plans to keep the company focused on its core Linux OS and middleware business while also improving the service it offers to customers, he said Thursday.

If you read my blog yesterday, you noticed my entry about Microsoft's move to retire XP and effectively force Windows shops into a wasteful migration to Vista.

Developers of open-source Samba software will find their work a little easier thanks to an agreement with Microsoft, signed Thursday, that will give them access to previously secret data on how the Windows operating system works.

Mozilla Foundation, the organization behind the Firefox web browser, has defended itself against claims from sections of the Linux community that it has ignored Linux in the development of Firefox 3, the next generation of the browser. Mozilla's chief interface designer says Linux is very much included in the development project.

The Nasdaq stock exchange has given The SCO Group Inc. a little more time to get its financial house in order.

The TurboLinux Wizpy, a multimedia media player that contains a PC-bootable version of the Linux operating system, will go on sale worldwide in June.

Dell Inc. began polling customers about their software preferences on Tuesday as part of an effort by the struggling PC vendor to meet a popular request for desktops and notebooks that run on Linux instead of Windows.

Red Hat Inc. has pushed out the first public beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, an upgrade to its operating system that includes virtualization technologies intended to help companies get more use from their hardware.

In what is believed to be the largest open source project ever developed in Australia, Victoria's Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) has spent the past two years and A$1.2 million on a new content portal which will go live early next year.

Skype Technologies SA made available a first test version of its Internet telephony application for Linux on Monday, 10 months and more than 14 million downloads after releasing the first version for Windows.

Skype for Linux offers most of the same features as the Windows version. The software allows free, unlimited calls over an Internet connection to other Skype users as well as conference calls with up to five users and instant messaging. However, Linux users can't yet host conference calls using Skype, according to the Skype Web site.

In this column, Linux creator Linus Torvalds rebuts Mr. McBride's arguments, arguing that the GPL (GNU General Public License) software license that governs Linux has far more in common with U.S. Copyright Law than McBride suggests.

The cost of licensing Microsoft products and the lack of support for some of them, such as the NT operating system, which is still used widely in many city administrations, are among the chief reasons for the nine German cities to mull a switch from the U.S. software giant to providers of open-source products, he said.

he Linux desktop battle heated up Wednesday when the developers of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) announced wide industry support for the newly formed KDE league. Developers of the competing Gnome open-source operating environment beat KDE to the punch in August when the Gnome Foundation released a laundry list of vendors backing the group

Nick Petreley explains why he is writing about Windows for the third consecutive time and, in the process, covers XFree86, Win4Lin, and the rumor that Microsoft is using Linux code in Windows.

Lack of high-level system and network management tools could inhibit growth as more businesses look to use Linux in their operations. Many in the ranks of Linux adherents may welcome the hands-on control of system management based on command lines, but the same tools may put off some veteran IT managers.