Wikipedia dumps Red Hat for Ubuntu

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit entity behind the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia, has finished the porting of its IT infrastructure - including most servers and desktops - to the Ubuntu variant of Linux, reports The Register.

Wikimedia has been running on a mix of Red Hat development and commercial Linuxes since it was founded seven years ago, and while the number of machines that have been changed is relatively small in terms of the size of the Linux universe, it is a win nonetheless for Canonical, the commercial company behind the Ubuntu distribution.

Gerry Carr, marketing manager at Canonical, said Wikimedia began its transition to Ubuntu in earnest in April with the Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support launch, although the organisation had some Ubuntu 6.04 instances running on its servers alongside a mix of Fedora and Red Hat distributions starting back in 2006.

The UK government has decided not to step in to prevent the extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon, or to guarantee his return to the UK, in the case of him being extradited and sentenced in the US, says Computing.co.uk.

This is the latest in the ongoing legal battle between the US government and the accused hacker, according to a message received by vnunet.com from Karen Todner, the lawyer representing McKinnon. The European Court of Human Rights had previously turned down an appeal to delay the extradition.

Todner said she had polled home secretary Jacqui Smith asking McKinnon be tried in the UK, where it is likely he would receive more favourable treatment, or at least for him to be returned to the UK to serve any sentence. She added that the home secretary did not even make the request to the US.

Residents of Muswell Hill, London, and Whitchurch, South Glamorgan, will be the first to try next-generation broadband, says The BBC.

Exchanges in both areas are to become pilot sites where the fibre-based broadband will be tested.

Once the exchanges are upgraded, home users should be able to go online at speeds in excess of 40Mbps.

The beleaguered Dow Jones Industrial Index surged back up above 9 000 in its largest single-day point gain ever on Monday, while Apple, Microsoft, Dell and other technology companies captured double-digit gains, says CNet.

After taking investors on a hellacious ride last week, Wall Street didn't disappoint expectations of a better week, with the Dow soaring 936.42 points to close at 9 9387.61, after suffering eight consecutive days of losses from its previous post of 10 850.66 on 30 September.

Investors were apparently pleased with several new developments, including the central banks agreeing to pump more funds into US financial institutions and the US Treasury agreeing to buy some bank stocks, as noted in a posting on CBSNews.com.