IBM has signed a 7-year, $969 million contract with British bank Lloyds TSB to supply it with Internet telephony and data services, The U.S.-based computer giant said on Monday.

Walmart.com, which pioneered Linux PCs, is now selling cheap Microtel boxes with the Xandros brand of desktop Linux that Xandros bought off Corel.

First it was Napster, a foundational step in the future development of P2P. Now it is Snocap, P2P network with snocap's own version of DRM, where files are free to download, but you are charged based on usage.

As we celebrate the holiday season and prepare for the next round of legislation, a group of state and local governments has banded together to collect and distribute freely the costly software that normally runs taxpayers $100 billion annually. Called the Government Open Code Collaborative or GOCC.gov, this organization states that its members work together voluntarily to encourage "the sharing, at no cost, of computer code developed for and by government entities where the redistribution of this code is allowed".

Novell ships desktop Linux for enterprises In recent years, the IT industry has been asking when Linux will be ready to take on the desktop Jack Messman Chairman and CEO Novell �In recent years, the IT industry has been asking when Linux will be ready to take on the desktop,� said Jack Messman, Novell chairman and CEO. �Novell is focusing its enterprise desktop efforts on Linux deployments where users can gain the most benefit. Novell Linux Desktop is not about the wholesale replacement of your Windows systems, but rather about identifying where and when an open source desktop can be a sensible, cost-effective alternative. In our pragmatic view, the time is now ripe for specific desktop users to reap the benefits of open source.� Novell Linux Desktop 9 is built on the same software as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. Beta testers have successfully tried out the software with their transaction workers such as call-centre operators and service-counter personnel. Desktop Linux has also attracted interest as a replacement for traditional high-cost UNIX-based technical workstations. The Novell Linux Desktop includes the Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org, providing a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation suite compatible with Microsoft Office file formats. It also includes Mozilla Firefox, a full-featured browser, and Novell Evolution, a collaboration client for Linux. Evolution integrates e-mail, calendar, contact management and task lists into one easy-to-use application.

Sun Microsystems has quietly begun seeking official open-source status for a new software license that likely will be used to govern its Solaris operating system.

TimeSys(R) Corporation, a leader in embedded Linux(R) technologies and development tools, today announced the availability of TimeStorm(R) Linux Development Kits (LDKs) for IBM PowerPC 750FX and 750GX microprocessors. TimeStorm LDKs include a ready-to-run, hardware-optimized 2.6-based Linux distribution with advanced real-time capabilities such as schedulable hard and soft interrupt handlers and a fully preemptible kernel. 750FX and 750GX LDKs also include the Eclipse 3.0-based TimeStorm(R) Linux Development Suite (LDS), which enables developers to rapidly develop and debug applications or further optimize the Linux kernel and filesystems for their target platform.

Expanding their longtime partnership into the Linux* arena, Oracle and Novell today announced that Oracle's latest database, clustering, application server, collaboration solutions and enterprise applications are now available for and supported on Novell's SUSE� LINUX Enterprise Server 9. Oracle� Database 10g, Oracle Application Server 10g and Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Collaboration Suite, and Oracle E-Business Suite 11i 10 have all been tested and certified for deployment on SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9. Customers can deploy Oracle products on SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 knowing that Novell and Oracle stand behind them with world-class support and training.

Analysts said landing the Wal-Mart deal is a nice win for Xandros, which is not one of the better-known Linux desktop distributions. Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff told LinuxInsider that Red Hat's move away from low-priced retail offerings has left the door open for companies like Xandros.

An international team of physicists, scientists and engineers achieved a new speed record for long distance data transfer: During the Supercomputing Bandwidth Challenge the sustained data transfer was 101 Gbit per second (Gbp/s) between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. This is more than four times faster than last year's record of 23 Gbp/s.