Explore the innovation of open source solutions available from IBM and see the power and flexibility of an open community development environment.

linuxlinks.com: This is a brief guide to the world of Linux distributions, primarily aimed at individuals who are new to the Linux scene, and who are thinking about taking the plunge and trying Linux for the first time. To set the scene, let's start with a very brief history of the origins of Linux.

dot.kde.org: With only a month to go the schedule for Akademy 2007 is filling up. Our tutorial day has been popular enough to fill up two days covering subjects from Interview in Qt 4 to Emacs, Kopete plugins and an introduction to KDE development.

CNET: When the pale blue "Linux car," also known as car #77 from Chastain Motorsports, was the first car to crash in the 91st Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, we can imagine hordes of geeks wishing it had been a "Vista car" instead. Imagine the "blue screen of death" jokes that could have resulted!

itjungle.com: Last week, just as the Western economies were gearing down for the Memorial Day holiday, commercial Linux distributor Novell announced that it has completed its lengthy and voluntary review of stock-based compensation for the past decade and can now report its financial results for the first quarter.

Ubuntu Geek: Azureus implements the BitTorrent protocol using java language and comes bundled with many invaluable features for both beginners and advanced users.Azureus offers multiple torrent downloads, queuing/priority systems (on torrents and files), start/stop seeding options and instant access to numerous pieces of information about your torrents. Azureus now features an embedded tracker easily set up and ready to use.

This article shows how you can install Ruby on Rails (RoR) and integrate it in Apache2 on a Debian Etch system. Ruby on Rails is a web application framework which is rapidly gaining popularity among web programmers. It aims to increase the speed and ease with which database-driven web sites can be created and offers skeleton code frameworks (scaffolding) from the outset. Applications using the RoR framework are developed using the Model-View-Controller design pattern.

Leon Atkinson's blog: I’ve been running Ubuntu for about a year. I still have an XP desktop at home, but most of my time is spent on a Ubuntu laptop or the Alienware box I converted last July. Sometimes things are little harder or impossible on Ubuntu. However, support for USB devices seems to be awesome, and today Ubuntu did something easily for me that I couldn’t get XP to do.

Linux.com: Backing up files and directories is relatively easy; databases, however, have some special quirks that you need to address. Our examples use MySQL, but the same principles apply to PostgreSQL and other relational databases.

the how-to geek: If you've got a directory with dozens of zipped or rar'd files, you can run a single command to unzip them all in one step, thanks to the power of the bash shell.

And: Command line tip - look for strings inside binary files

ComputerWorld: Ever since its debut, Firefox has garnered a reputation for being an enormously customizable program, both through its add-on architecture and its internal settings. In this article, we'll explore some of the most useful Firefox settings that you can change on your own, and that aren't normally available through the program's graphical interface.

And: The Mozilla Manifesto: with great power comes great responsibility
& FoxTorrent - Next-Generation File Sharing
& With a name like SeaMonkey, it’s gotta be good

ars technica: Joost, the compelling new on-demand P2P video service from the creators of Skype, has attracted considerable attention since the launch of its closed beta program. Last week, we offered 10,000 of our readers the opportunity to join in on the fun. I grabbed an invite myself so that I could put Joost to the test on the open-source Linux platform.

/home/liquidat: The new commit digest is out, and features several important news. Among them are the first real Plasma screenshots, a Kcontrol module for Kwin and Krita and Kalzium improvements.

blogbeebe: I can never leave anything alone, especially if it's an OS I've not played with before. I ordered a free copy of Sun's Open Solaris Starter Kit mid-May, and took some time this evening to boot its three included distributions; Nexenta, Belenix, and Schillix.

nzherald: This debacle over school computer software shows just how beholden the big institutions in society are to major software companies, and in particular - Microsoft.

bangkokpost: The organisers of a project to make cheap laptops for children at their governments' expense insist they still are negotiating with Thailand to take part in the scheme, even though the government has rejected it over and over.

pressgazette.co.uk: Audacity is a cheap (ie free) and cheerful piece of audio editing software that''ll work on Windows, Macs and apparently Linux. All you need is a computer with a sound card... and some audio to edit.

Free Software Mag Blogs: One of the biggest navigational issues with any operating system is using program menus. It is hard to find programs (and what if you look for Thunderbird in Office, and then realize it is under Internet?). KDE users have the great, free-as-in-speech, Katapult.

O'Reilly Radar: Looking ahead to the next few years, one of the critical steps to making Linux a complete drop-in replacement for proprietary operating systems is filling in the last few missing desktop productivity applications: calendaring, contact management, project management tools, PDA/cell phone/laptop synchronization, etc.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Continued work in Plasma, particularly in the clock visualisations. Kalzium uses the GetHotNewStuff framework to download new molecules for its 3d viewer, plus speed optimisations for the rendering of these molecules. The start of fullscreen support in the Gwenview image viewer.