After two days, the big Linux trade show here hasn’t produced any big surprises or high drama. But there is plenty of evidence that the alternative operating system is sitting solidly in the mainstream. So solidly that “over 50% of our customers will use Linux in the next five years, if not sooner,” Phillips said.
By most measures, Linux is growing faster than any other operating system, although the same measures show that the free alternative is still very much a minority in both business and home computing. In 2004, sales of Linux server software grew by 44% to $4.25 billion. But the overall market, which is still dominated by Unix and Windows, totaled $46.2 billion, according to market researcher IDC.
Even David Patrick, who heads the Linux efforts of Novell(NOVL Quote), admits that a world in which most people run Linux on their desktop computers — a bit of hype that once received a surprisingly credulous reception — is far off. “We feel like it is a long road for us. It certainly has not been an overnight shift,” he told reporters on Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s face it: Symbian has no future and mobile Linux is coming… and Qtopia has chances to become de-facto standard for GUIs in mobile Linux!
Largest Independent Design House Uses Qtopia Technology for its Newest Linux-Based Handset Platform
Trolltech, provider of leading technologies for Linux and cross-platform software development, today announced that its Qtopia software for Linux-based mobile phones is the application development foundation for Cellon International’s new C8000 handset platform. Cellon International, the world’s largest independent design house for wireless devices, has used Qtopia to build, customize and extend the Linux-based software applications and graphical user interface (GUI) for the C8000.
A major European Vendor has already shipped the first mobile phones built on the C8000 platform in the third quarter of 2005. Read the rest of this entry »

In a move officials say will spur more end-user interest in its software, Novell is going to open up a community effort around its SUSE Linux Professional operating system.
The software will be used as a foundation for a new community project called the OpenSUSE Project, which opens up shop on Tuesday at www.opensuse.org.
The Waltham, Mass.-based company will drop “Professional” from the software name, marketing its project under an outreach initiative called “Lizard Blizzard.” The term is a reference to the company’s reptilian mascot, Geeko.
Once the project’s been established, the company expects to include other open source projects that can be used with SUSE Linux. Read the rest of this entry »

The latest and greatest version of the king of live Linux distributions, Knoppix, has been released at LinuxTag early this week. DVD based Knoppix version 4.0 includes as much as 4GB of applications, utilities and games. But can it live up to the hype?
Live Linux distributions are extremely useful in different ways: they can be used for demo systems, to test new applications without installing anything on the hard drives, to quickly deploy tens or hundreds of identical workstations for events, as rescue disks, or just to have a «highly portable» workstation by just carrying a CD/DVD and a writable media unit (typically a USB token). Read the rest of this entry »

Red Hat is changing course again with its free Fedora version of Linux, announcing Friday that it will turn over copyrights and development work to an outside entity called the Fedora Foundation.
Red Hat once had just one version of Linux, but beginning in 2002 it split the product into the commercially supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the free and fast-moving Fedora. But the company struggled to meet the original Fedora goal of attracting widespread outside involvement.
Given that Red Hat treated Fedora as a proving ground to rapidly mature features it wanted to add into RHEL, it’s not a surprise programmers saw it as a Red Hat project. But the Raleigh, N.C.-based company is making concrete moves to help Fedora stand on its own.
The establishment of the foundation comes on the eve of a new version of the software. Fedora Core 4 is due to ship Monday, bringing broader processor support, the Xen software for running multiple operating systems on one computer, version 4 of the GCC compiler, and other features. Read the rest of this entry »

Knoppix is a Live-CD distribution. You burn it to a CD, put the CD into the CD drive and reboot into a Linux environment. When you are done, take out the CD and reboot. It is a swiss army knife of utilities useful for many tasks. However very few books have been so far written exploring its full power. One of the best books on Knoppix is Knoppix Hacks. The author, Kyle Rankin, explores all the factes of this versatile distribution in his book. The book is an essential reference for anyone who has to fix computers, whether SysAdmin, or the family “Computer Guy”.

The book has 9 chapters, each covering a certain aspect of Knoppix. It’s grouped by subject, and each hack stands on its own, without depending on any other hack. However there are a lot of cross references. The book includes a CD of Knoppix 3.4, which is currently a little dated, the latest version of Knoppix (at the time of writing) being 3.6. Read the rest of this entry »

Our member Dr. Mandar Mitra from ISI, Kolkata has about 99 sets of Ubuntu CDs for distribution. He is busy at this moment, if you want to grab a copy send me your request at this address -> indradg (at) icbic (dot) com Read the rest of this entry »

I take the opportunity to introduce to you, Doctor Gustav Degreef who hails from Argentina and was educated and trained in the US. What binds us, is the fact that Dr. Gus as he likes to be called, is a Linux freak! just like most of us… The following paragraphs are a collection of Dr Gus\\\’ experiences with free software, and what I call, his tryst with freedom.

This is a short story of my expereiences with Linux. I installed my first copy of Linux (Suse 6.3) from a CD in a local magazine. I was intrigued and I followed the directions and installed it on the first try without any significant problems. I played with it for some time and experimented a lot with different distributions. Six months later I got another distribution (based on Red Hat) from a computer magazine CD and also installed it without much problems. Since then 90% of my computer/desktop needs are met by Linux. Read the rest of this entry »

ILUG-Cal is going to organise its November meeting in association with WBUT-LUG on Saturday, the 6th of November at West Bengal University of Technology, Kolkata from 5 P.M. onwards. Get the program details now!

Agenda:
1. Formal Inauguration of WBUT-LUG, welcome address and speeches from guests (ILUG-Cal)
2. Archan Pal on The Use of Embedded Linux in Appliance Servers. Time permitting, we can also have J.P.Mathew demonstrating his ARM kit.
3. G. Karunakar on Localisation of Free Software in Indian Languages
4. Indranil Das Gupta on Localisation of Open Source Library Management Software - Koha speaks Bangla.
5. Sayamindu Dasgupta on Multimedia in Linux
6. Bof Session (Q/A, Open Forum) Read the rest of this entry »

Sumeet Madhukar Moghe recently installed Slackware 10 on his notebook, and was pretty impressed by the latest avatar of the venerable Slack. Here\’s what he has to say about the distro.