An anonymous reader writes "With a press release Mandrakesoft has announced the acquisition of Conectiva. 'Mandrakesoft, the number one European Linux company, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Conectiva, the number one Linux company in Brazil and Latin America. This acquisition is expected to increase significantly Mandrakesoft's size and R&D capabilities.'"

joseamuniz asks: "After giving Linux classes to Secondary School Teachers, I got in touch with a non-profit organization called UNETE. This association has donated 1,523 computer labs to public schools in Mexico. I told them about Linux, and they are interested in equipping a beta computer lab with this Operating System, with Intel PIII, 256 MB RAM PCs. The more they like this lab, the higher chances to include Linux in the new labs donated by this institution." What hardware configurations and software packages would you install on such a machine to show off the real power of Linux in an educational environment?

rednaxel writes "This morning, both companies issued press releases about the merge. French Mandrakesoft is acquiring all shares of brazilian Conectiva for a total amount of 1.79 million EUR (2.3 million USD) in stock." CNet has coverage of the merger as well. From the article: "This won't elevate us to the status of Red Hat or Novell/SuSE yet, of course, but this is a significant growth for us..."

An anonymous reader writes "Jobo AG originally fielded its $550 Giga Vu Pro as a tool for digital photography buffs, but this small embedded computer, running a Linux 2.4 kernel, has much broader potential, according to an article at LinuxDevices.com. A free software development kit for the device is now available at sourceforge.net, along with instructions for loading software into flash memory, a tutorial on turning the device into a Doom game console, and a contributions page for those willing to share their new apps."

jeremy writes "LQ Radio has just posted the third in a series of audio clips from the recent SCALE 3X Expo. Clips posted so far include the Flight Gear booth, LinuxChix LA and Brion Vibber of Wikipedia. Still to come are Linux Astronomy, LAMPSIG and a conversation with SCALE's Media Director. All the audio clips are being released under a Creative Commons license."

duncan bayne writes "I have just installed Vector Linux SOHO 5.0 RC2 on my old P150 laptop. Overall I was very impressed, and have posted a brief review on my blog. This distro has a lot to offer, especially to schools and other organisations trying to extract more useful life from obsolete hardware."

hdm writes "The Metasploit Project has published a security analysis of the Arkeia Network Backup Client. Anyone able to connect to TCP port 617 can gain read/write access to the filesystem of any host running the Arkeia agent software. This appears to be an intentional design decision on the part of the Arkeia developers. A long-winded description of this issue, complete with screen shots, demonstration code, and packet captures can be found in the research article. Arkeia has been credited with being the first commercial backup product for the Linux platform."

loki99 points out a CNET story about the direction Red Hat's development has taken (and changes in the wind), writing "Michael Tiemann, vice president of Red Hat, admits that after exclusively concentrating on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in recent years, they left those 'early adopters' behind. 'It insulted some of our best supporters. But worse, we lost our opportunity to do customer-driven innovation.' Tiemann said." The recent Boston FUDcon (mentioned in the linked article) is one example of how the company wants to revitalize non-corporate interest.

A8 writes "There is a new toy (aka the S101) around the corner from a German company called Road GmbH. Looks like the Nokia Communicator, but is a little PC with GSM, GPRS, IrDA, Bluetooth, WLAN -- you name it, running Linux 2.6/Qtopia! Sorry seems like the page is in German only." There are also versions based on the same hardware but running Windows CE and Symbian.

An anonymous reader writes "Following in the wake of its previous certifications, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 has achieved EAL4 certification on 'an IBM eServer.' This puts SLES9 in the same league as Windows 2000 for sales in the government sector and is the first Linux distro to achieve an EAL4 certification."

RMX writes "LinuxWorld Australia has an interesting article discussing Linux Desktop adoption in Cisco. Cisco "already converted more than 2,000 of its engineers to Linux desktops...plans to move many laptop users to the platform over the next few years...the driver for Linux on the desktop is not cost savings, but easier support. Manning estimates that it takes a company approximately one desktop administrator to support 40 Windows PCs, while one administrator can support between 200 and 400 Linux desktops.'"

MarcQuadra asks: "I've been a Linux user since 1998, and I admin Mac OS X machines at work, but I have yet to find a distribution that comes out-of-the-box with modern directory services. Sure, there are guides to kerberize and set up OpenLDAP, but before I can start pushing Linux as an alternative at work I'll need a few things. Are there any distributions out there that can auto-mount SMB shares as home directories without heavy modification? How about a distro that's based on OpenLDAP and can easily be configured with LDAP-enabled SAMBA and Kerberos? Am I missing something, or is this not a priority with the community at-large?"

IainMH writes "Over at the BBC, there is a report that despite the slow build up, IBM is spending $100m (£52m) over the next three years beefing up its commitment to Linux software. It continues: 'The cash injection will be used to help its customers use Linux on every type of device from handheld computers and phones right up to powerful servers.'" Commentary and coverage also available on TechNewsWorld and ZDNet.

bonch writes "Rosegarden 1.0 has been released for Linux. From the website: 'Rosegarden is one of the most comprehensive Linux music software projects, and is the only Linux application to offer full composition and recording capabilities to musicians who prefer to use classical notation.' Rosegarden is free software under the GPL. Take a tour or find a package for your distro."

cfelde writes "A Windows Web server is more secure than a similarly set-up Linux server, according to a study presented yesterday by two Florida researchers." In addition to the Seattle Times article, there is also coverage on VNUnet. From the article: "The researchers, appearing at the RSA Conference of computer-security professionals, discussed the findings in an event, 'Security Showdown: Windows vs. Linux.' One of them, a Linux fan, runs an open-source server at home; the other is a Microsoft enthusiast. They wanted to cut through the near-religious arguments about which system is better from a security standpoint."

canfirman writes "Reuters is reporting that SCO could be delisted from the NASDAQ because "it has not filed its annual 10-K report with the SEC". The company claims it's because "it is examining matters related to stock issued as part of its compensation plans". SCO Stock is sitting at $4.30 at opening today. It'll be interesing to see where it goes from here."

IamTheRealMike writes "In January, Microsoft announced a new anti-piracy initiative called Genuine Advantage. From this summer onwards all users of Microsoft Downloads will be required to validate using either an ActiveX control or a standalone tool. Yesterday Ivan Leo Puoti, a Wine developer, discovered that the validation tool checks directly for Wine and bails out with a generic error when found. This is significant as it's not only the first time Microsoft has actively discriminated against users running their programs via Wine, but it's also the first time they've broken radio silence on the project."

comforteagle writes "I've published Part II of W. McDonald Buck's essay on Linux TCO. In it he looks at the scenario of a company having already moved to Linux in the server room and also to open source software on Windows desktops, but "...now wants to know, how much extra can be saved by the final step of changing the operating system itself? And, what are the other costs, risks and benefits of doing that. To keep the scenario simple, we're assuming too that this will be done at a time when the desktop equipment is also being replaced. The news is good, but not as good as we like to believe." Part I was discussed previously on Slashdot."

Dave Zatz writes "Tivo, struggling to keep customers and inch towards profitability as execs step down, has continued to shift focus from pure PVR functionality towards digital convergence. Tivo's recently released Home Media Engine SDK extends Tivo's capabilities as developers churn early Java apps out, including the eBay-developed BuyItNow and the independent Airport Express AirTunes remote control. The recently released Tivo To Go allows PC users to transfer shows to their computers for viewing, editing, and burning shows. Mac users aren't entirely forgotten - a hidden feature in the OSX Tivo Desktop 1.9 provides AAC music playback through the television."

Bytal writes "Seth Nickel, a GNOME hacker, has an extensive treatment of the next generation Linux graphics technologies being worked on by Red Hat and others. For all those complaining about the current X-Windows/X.org server capabilities, things like 'Indiana Jones buttons that puff out smoothly animated clouds of smoke when you click on them,' 'Workspace switching effects so lavish they make Keynote jealous' and even the mundane 'Hardware accelerated PDF viewers' may be interesting."