Get started with Linux, Dec 11, 2007

Switching on a Linux PC for the first time may be a little disorientating as many options are in different places. Follow our guide and find your feet quickly and easily with the Ubuntu version of Linux.

The Free Software Foundation plans to release the final version of the General Public Licence version 3 (GPLv3) on Friday 29 June.

Linspire, the company behind desktop Linux operating systems Linspire and Freespire, has announced the availability of its Win4Lin Pro Desktop.

Intel's Classmate PCs currently shipping in Brazil and Mexico all run Windows despite buyers having the option of running Linux, according to an Intel spokeswoman.

The Conservatives will place more reliance on open source software in government IT if they win the next General Election.

Organisations such as the newly formed Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) face considerable challenges in their efforts to promote the improved integration of open source business systems, experts have warned.

Linux distributor Debian issued a security advisory over the weekend, warning of several problems in Mozilla and associated products such as Mozilla Firefox.

Sun Microsystems today began touting its Solaris 10 operating system as "a more strategic alternative to commercial Linux distributions".

Red Hat has laid out more plans on how it will use its JBoss acquisition as a jemmy to compete with enterprise stack providers such as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft.

The patent cross licensing deal that Microsoft and Novell unveiled last Thursday will be incompatible with the GPL3 license and is likely incompatible with the current GPL2 license, alleged Eben Moglen, a law professor and open source activist.

Roger Klorese, product director at XenSource, the company behind the open-source Xen software project, told IT Week, “We decided to synchronise the release of 3.0.3 with the Fedora Core 6 schedule and hence push it back... It now has several of the features that were originally slated for 3.0.4.”

Open source developers released a new edition of the Gnome Partition Editor (GParted) earlier this month. Though it is based on Linux, updates to the bootable versions mean people without Linux skills can now use them.

The Portland Project has released a beta version of its programming interfaces for the Gnome and KDE Linux environments. This is designed to boost development of desktop Linux applications by creating common application programming interfaces (APIs) for developers to use.

Linux vendor Xandros will this week ship version 4.0 of its desktop distribution, Xandros Desktop OS. The new package is expected to include better support for wireless networking, an integrated security suite, plus the ability to read and write to a Windows NTFS partition – features that may attract firms looking for an alternative to Windows on some systems.

Server virtualisation specialist VMware has announced that the next version of its mid-range GSX Server virtualisation product will be offered free of charge and will be named VMware Server. The news was welcomed by users.

Product activation has been driving students and others on shoestring budgets to Linux, and this is a real problem for Microsoft. After all, Linux is a great environment for software developers.