AMD partners with Novell to open source ATI graphic drivers.
AMD announced on Sept. 7 a major strategic change in open-source graphic processors support. The company announced it would provide open-source information and a development package supporting the ATI RadeonHD 2000 series ATI Radeon X1000 series of graphics processing units on Linux desktops. more... and ATI Radeon drivers to be open sourced. and A new road for AMD and ATI.

IBM puts programming power behind OpenOffice.
IBM joined OpenOffice.org on Sept.10, and the company is bringing its programming muscle with it to improve the popular open-source office suite. While IBM has long used OpenOffice.org code, licensed under the LGPL (Lesser GPL), in its own programs, such as the groupware program Lotus Notes 8, this has been IBM's own fork of the code. Starting now, IBM is directing its OpenOffice development efforts--involving about three dozen programmers--to the public, open-source OpenOffice suite. more... and IBM dives into OpenOffice.org development.

VirtualBox 1.5.0 update includes seamless windowing.
Innotek rolled out a significant update to its VirtualBox open source virtualization software this week. According to Achim Hasenmueller, managing director of innotek, the release of VirtualBox 1.5.0 for Windows and Linux marks the first time seamless windowing -- the ability to display a single Windows application on a Linux desktop -- is available for Linux systems. more... and more.... and more... and VirtualBox 1.5: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

First looks at SmoothWall Express 3.0 "Polar".
Smoothwall Express 3 has finally been released to the public after a few years in various stages of alpha/beta. I have tried (please read that as 'used/using') both the Grizzly and Panda pre-releases prior to this, so I felt that I had a good idea of what Smoothwall Express 3 final was going to be like but boy was I was wrong. more...
and The perfect start with Smoothwall Express 3.0.

VMware Unveils VMware Tools as Open Source Software.
Mware, Inc., the virtualization leader, today at VMworld 2007 announced that it has released a majority of VMware Tools as open source software as part of the project Open Virtual Machine Tools. more... Canonical to Provide Optimized Ubuntu OS Layer for VMware Virtual Appliances. more...

Stretching your instant messaging wings with Pidgin.
Today, everyone uses a different instant messenger. Your boss may use Lotus, your colleague AIM, your friend Google Talk, and your kid Yahoo! Messenger. However, these all take up hard drive space, RAM, and CPU usage. Luckily, the free software world has an alternative that enables users to chat with users of all of these programs. It is called Pidgin. more...

A quick guide to DVD authoring.
If you have video footage that you want to capture, edit, and share with friends or family (or even use professionally), you'll be happy to know that you can do it all with open source tools. I'll show you how to author a DVD that can play on most home players. more...

Linux-based SLUG spawns highly hackable NAS.
Cisco's consumer products division is shipping a successor to the Linux-based NSLU2 (aka "SLUG") consumer NAS (network-attached storage) appliance, one of the most-hacked devices ever. The NAS200 has room for two internal SATA drives, supports FAT32-formatted external USB 2.0 drives, and comes with UPnP media-sharing software. more...

Google Earth Flight Simulator.
The newest version of Google Earth includes a flight simulator. Though simple in comparison to full-blown simulators, Google Earth's is fun and addictive. more...

How To Tips.

See you next Thursday 7 P.M. at 420 Cafe, 420 Washington Ave, Eau Claire, WI.

EC_LUG