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Running Microsoft Windows or Apple's Mac OS X gives users about the same amount of flexibility as was offered to early car buyers. They could drive any kind of car they wanted, as long as it was a Model T and as long as it was black. When the free open source Linux OS first showed up, early develope...

It's not too often the public schools figure prominently in the Linux blogs, but sure enough, this week they drew a surprising amount of discussion on a few different sites. Specifically, news broke on Tuesday that the mayor of Birmingham, Ala., has signed a purchase agreement for 15,000 laptops fro...

The open source KDE Community has turned loose the first release candidate for KDE 4.0 Desktop, the next generation of the KDE Linux/Unix desktop application. The release candidate comes after four betas, one more than the community originally intended, but it means that the majority of the componen...

When it comes time to upgrade to a new version of proprietary software -- take the Windows OS, for example -- many users are less than thrilled. Upgrades can mean an added expense for anything more extensive than a bug fix or minor feature upgrades. Even free minor version upgrades of a software pro...

Novell has set loose OpenSuse 10.3, the latest version of the company's free Linux distribution. More specifically, OpenSuse 10.3 was created by the OpenSuse project, the community Novell sponsored, which now has 54,000 registered members. To improve the user experience, OpenSuse 10.3 includes a fle...

When a Web surfer clicks on an icon to launch his or her favorite Web browser, only the geekiest of the geeky pay any thought to which engine layout is at work. The typical Web user has no clue that a different browser choice may also include a different browser layout engine. If anything, most Inte...

Canonical, the London-based commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, released on Thursday version 7.04 of its OS family, known as "Feisty Fawn." The latest releases contain upgrades for both the Ubuntu Server Edition and the desktop version. These versions use the standard Linux Gnome de...

Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 by Terra Soft Solutions may not yet have the name recognition of Red Hat Linux, Novell Suse Linux or relative newcomer Ubuntu Linux by Canonical, but it is already well-established as an OS provider to some of the biggest names in the Power Architecture computing industry. Terra...

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" The question seemingly has no real answer, and biologists can argue either reply ad nauseam. The computer world has an equally pervasive question that cannot provide a single answer: "What are the top three Linux distributions?" Ask any collection o...

TurboLinux last week announced the release of a palm-sized USB device that comes with the firm's FUJI operating system embedded in its 4 GB flash memory. Called "Wizpy," the device will allow users to load Linux on any computer. The company plans to first distribute Wizpy in Japan in February. An En...

Linux has long been a contender in the corporate world to Windows. In addition, consumer interest is on the rise for this free, open source alternative to Windows or the Macintosh OS. Linux developed along similar lines as Windows in terms of GUI and performance capabilities with one major distinct...

Ubuntu -- an increasingly popular, Debian Linux-based operating system -- just got updated by its commercial backer Canonical, giving users of the new software an improved interface, faster boot time and better security, the company said this week. Dubbed "Edgy Eft," Ubuntu 6.10 is freely available ...

The Fedora Project, a community-supported open source collaboration sponsored by Red Hat, has released Fedora Core 6, the latest version of its Linux-based operating system. Fedora Core 6 provides a performance increase during the start-up of applications such as OpenOffice.org and, in addition to i...

Mandriva has launched a new distribution of its operating system, Mandriva Linux 2007. The new version has a desktop with both AIGLX and Xgl 3D technologies, which allow the average 2D desktop -- Windows 98, Windows XP, KDE or GNOME, for example -- to display 3D characteristics. Mandriva Linux 2007 ...

Software development toolmaker Trolltech, which provides its Qt and Qtopia development software for embedded, mobile and Linux systems developers, completed its initial public offering and earned a listing on Norway's Oslo Stock Exchange this week. "We wanted to have bigger financial muscle," Trollt...

Longtime Linux distribution vendor Xandros is not touting the latest Linux kernel functionality, KDE 3.42 user interface, or other cutting edge open source gems of the new version of its desktop operating system. Instead, Xandros has dubbed version 4.0 of its OS the "Digital Lifestyle Linux Desktop,...

Novell is undergoing a massive personnel shakeup that continues to unfold. The latest change in corporate management is SuSE Linux founder Hubert Mantel's resignation. Mantel reportedly announced his resignation on Tuesday via an e-mail to a SuSE mailing list. The chief maintainer of the SuSE Linux ...

The open-source KDE Project announced yesterday the release of its K Desktop Environment 3.4. The latest release, which has been in development for more than a year, includes accessibility features the organization says will be a boon for partially sighted and speech-impaired users. KDE 3.4 includes...

Two weeks ago, I asked for reader aid in getting documentation on early 1990s System VR4 Unix to help understand what things can be done with Linux today but could not be done with AT&T System VR4. The question was naive and I need more help (and aspirin) in struggling toward a better answer tha...

The independent, open-source KDE Project today announced the availability of KDE 3.3.2, a maintenance release for its latest, most advanced free desktop suite for GNU/Linux and other UNIX systems. KDE 3.3.2 ships with a basic desktop and eighteen other packages including administration, network, edu...