Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Sources close to Red Hat Inc. tell eWEEK.com that the company will release RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 4.0, the next version of its Linux operating system, at an event in conjunction with Februarys LinuxWorld trade show in Boston. This is the first major release of RHEL since September 2003. This also will be the […]

The Honeypot Project has added fuel to the debate over which is more secure—Linux or Windows—with findings that unpatched Linux systems can be on the Internet for months before being successfully attacked while Windows systems have been compromised in as little as hours. The international non-profit security organization—with members from security companies like Foundstone Inc., […]

Well, the big OSDL and IBM deal later this week looks like its going to be a dud. The rumor mill had it that IBM and OSDL (Open Source Development Labs), an organization dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux, were preparing to rewrite the Linux kernel to counter potential intellectual property and […]

Almost everyone outside of Microsoft country is using open source in their development, but that doesnt mean it comes easy. Weve seen proof positive of that this week. First, my friendly fellow reporter Stephen Shankland reported that Red Hat has decided to revitalize its free, community Linux, Fedora, by—drum roll please—opening up the project. Whats […]

IBM has recently opened the doors for open-source programmers to freely use 500 of its patents in their software so long as their projects meets the Open Source Initiative definition of open-source software. Good news, yes? Not according to some people who are as upset at IBM as if IBM CEO Sam Palmisano has suggested […]

I love Thunderbird, the Mozilla Foundations standalone e-mail client. I mean I really, really like it a lot. I use it on my Windows XP machines; I use it on my Linux systems. I put it on my daughters Mac, and Ive replaced my wifes copy of Outlook Express on her Windows 2000 box. They […]

Norwegian software vendor Opera Software ASA on Tuesday released the beta version of its Opera Web browser for Linux. The announcement comes several weeks after Opera announced the release of the beta of Opera 8 for Windows. Both versions of the popular alternative Web browser come with usability improvements such as fit to window width, […]

On Tuesday, popular French Linux vendor Mandrakesoft renewed its efforts to enter the business Linux space with the announcement that it will be releasing two new enterprise Linux distributions: Corporate Server and Corporate Desktop. “These products have received specific development and testing efforts to make them as fit as possible for use in a business […]

Sometimes people dont know when a revolution has happened until afterwards. Then, the historians tell us that 2004 was the year that open source started to become computings mainstream. Sounds hard to believe? Well, IDC analyst Al Gillen recently said that “Linux is no longer a fringe player. Linux is now mainstream.” He made that […]

Grid computing is a set of old ideas with new technology and business faces. Technically speaking, grid computing enables programs to be spread out over multiple computers via a network so that massive jobs can be done as efficiently as possible. Does that sound a lot like a traditional cluster to you? If it does, […]

I remember well when Novell NetWare was the network operating system for PC users. Over in my neck of the woods—mainframes, minis and workstations, oh my!—we were running OS/360 and Unix, but anyone who knew anything about PC-based servers was running NetWare. I couldnt blame them. NetWare was as stable as the Rock of Gibraltar […]

Novell Inc. gave its NetWare and Linux users a Christmas present by releasing the first public beta of Novell Open Enterprise Server over the holiday weekend. OES is Novells dual operating system, NetWare services platform. It can run on top of either SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) 9.0 or the NetWare 7.0 kernel or both. […]