Open source distributor Red Hat has come under fire after settling two patent suits for an undisclosed sum..
The open source community believes that the firm should have faced up to the opponents and had the patents struck down as invalid by the courts.
The infringement claims were brought by Firestar Software and DataTern and concerned Hibernate, a product Red Hat acquired when it bought JBoss in 2006.
Red Hat claims that the terms of the settlement will offer broad protection for upstream developers, downstream distributors and Red Hat’s customers.
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With days to go before the release of OpenSuSE 11, the Project has merged its support forums to provide a single English-language destination for OpenSUSE questions. A new Novell-hosted “forums.opensuse.org” forum integrates the three largest English-language dedicated support forums, with support for other languages soon.
Launched on June 9th, forums.opensuse.org offers a unified forum for all English-speaking openSUSE users, says the openSUSE Project. It aims to integrate the three largest English-language support forums, including:
- The OpenSUSE Novell support forums
- The SUSEforums.net site
- The SUSElinuxsupport.de site
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The Fedora project today released a new version of its completely free and redistributable Linux distribution. Showcasing lots of next-generation Red Hat features, Fedora 9 also boasts new features of its own aimed at making the distribution appeal more to newer Linux users.
Fedora 9’s more salient new features include:
- USB drive booting with user data persisting across reboots
- A nifty graphical Windows utility for creating USB boot drives
- Installer now supports partition resizing, to better support dual-booting, and LUKS encryption
- First distribution with KDE 4.0 (though Gnome still default UI)
- FreeIPA, a new user rights administration tool
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Ubuntu, Linspire, and Freespire users can now install “Google Earth” with a single click, says Linspire. The desktop Linux distributor has added support for the free mapping application to its CNR (”click-n-run”) installer, a user-friendly tool currently beta-testing for a wide variety of desktop Linux distributions.
Linspire said the version of Google Earth that CNR supports will work with Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10 (32-bit), Linspire 6.0, and Freespire 2.0. Presumably, it will also support Ubuntu’s Hardy Heron release scheduled for tomorrow, as Linspire has promised CNR support for that release.
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The Ubuntu team announced today the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) on desktop and server. Codenamed “Hardy Heron”, 8.04 LTS integrates the latest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.
The release candidate is complete, stable, and suitable for testing by any user.
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition features incremental improvements to familiar applications, with an emphasis on stability for this second Ubuntu long-term support release, and is easier to try out with the new Wubi installer.
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Mixing technical concerns with a truckload of business issues, Red Hat has stealthily acknowledged slipping its deadline for Red Hat Global Desktop (RHGD), which might have given it an edge against Novell’s competing SuSE Linux.
Unlike the existing Red Hat Enterprise Desktop (RHED), the planned RHGD is aimed exclusively at small, reseller supplied implementations in emerging geographic areas such as Brazil, China, and India. Red Hat also sponsors a community project called Fedora, which develops and maintains a free desktop product.
But RHED and the forthcoming RHGD are both commercial products geared to businesses.First announced at the 2007 Summit users conference, RHGD was then expected to ship a few months later.
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Novell Wednesday released the beta of its new “Just Enough” SUSE operating system targeted as a platform for Linux-based appliances.
The company is releasing the beta in conjunction with the creation of the SUSE Appliance Program targeted at independent software vendors (ISV) who want to package their applications with SUSE Linux on an appliance.
In March, Novell unveiled a strategy that focuses on providing modular network infrastructure services to corporations including distributions of its core OS software tuned for physical or virtual servers. The services, which can be plugged together, also include virtualization, orchestration, policy, identity, compliance, management and collaboration tools.
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Hopes of Red Hat releasing a desktop version of Linux for consumers were scratched today as the company announced no such plans would eventuate in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, its long awaited Red Hat Global Desktop Linux remains on indefinite hold, despite being slated for an original launch date of August 2007.
Although Red Hat had previously announced it was planning to launch a version of Linux designed for users of personal computers, the company has now backed down in the face of stiff competition and the likelihood of little profits.
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Two recent studies suggest that Linux is being seen as a solution for wider and more critical business deployments. An IDC report says Linux server usage is expanding to more commercially oriented workloads previously the domain of Windows and Unix. And a Linux Foundation report shows the growing importance of Linux to big business.
IDC researchers predict that spending on the Linux ecosystem will rise from $21 billion in 2007 to more than $49 billion in 2011, driven by rising enterprise deployments of Linux server operating systems.
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Microsoft’s Vista Ultimate SP1 and Apple, Inc.’s MacBook Air have been hacked through applications, with only Ubuntu unbreached in the Pwn to Own challenge at CanSecWest. The zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft and Apple’s systems have been reported. Shane Macaulay won a laptop and $5,000 for hacking Microsoft Windows Vista.
Last week saw the MacBook Air hacked through a Safari browser at the CanSecWest security conference. But before the week ended, Microsoft ’s Vista Ultimate also fell victim to hackers in the Pwn to Own challenge.
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