The Open Graphics Project has started accepting preorders for their OGD1, a graphics card with a completely open source design. This initial release is billed as a high-end FPGA prototyping kit specifically designed to test computer graphics architectures. The card has two DVI connectors, S-Video, 256MB RAM, and a 64bit PCI-X connector. The core of the system is a Xilinx Spartan-3 XC3S4000 FPGA.

This probably comes as no surprise to most Unix or Linux administrators out there (at least this first thing), but I find it's always interesting how rarely the "last" command is used to determine anything other than the users logged in "now" and the "last" time a user logged in.

An eagle-eyed user of the Linux Kernel Mailing List archive, going by the name of Jo Shields (who many of you may know), has accused Compro Technology of violating the General Public License (GPL).

In his rationalization about why government-mandated open source software deployment is not a good idea, Microsoft's Director of Standards made some assumptions about what the real value of open source software (OSS) is for governments.

We in the open source community live in a bubble world. People live in an Ubuntu bubble or a Fedora bubble. Fedora 9 was just released and I, as an Ubuntu user, couldn’t care less. I don’t use Fedora, so the announcement of Fedora 9, does not resonate with me. Likewise, when Hardy Heron was released in April, Fedora users let out a collective yawn.

For many computer users, the desire to find something more cost effective than Windows has been growing from a low growl to a loud roar. Obviously not everyone is a great candidate to make the switch to the open source operating system. Once you are able to better understand some of the strengths of using the Linux desktop, however, you too might find that migrating makes a lot sense.

Linux's market value in China is growing, according to CCID Consulting, owing to growing approval from government, finance, telecoms and post services. Linux is also making inroads to the desktop in China, mostly from smaller PC manufacturers. In addition, mobile devices are a widening market for Linux.