There’s a lot of great distros out there, but Debian just meets my taste. I’ve been using Debian over a year now and this is why I love it: Freedom.

The 2.6.17.8 stable kernel is available. There is a fairly long list of important fixes this time around, but none with CVE (vulnerability) numbers attached. More Info.

Fedora Core 6 Test 2 is out. I’ve been running Rawhide (the development version of Fedora Core), updating it daily and installing it periodically from a local network server, but the test releases provide a welcome opportunity to install from optical disc.
The step from FC5 to FC6 is smaller and more evolutionary than FC4 to FC5. Highlights:

Fifteen years after the introduction of the Linux kernel, next week's LinuxWorld conference will focus not on whether to use open source software - the market has answered that question - but on how to deploy, secure and manage the technology as part of a business IT operation.

Warning to Linux users who want to upgrade to socket AM2 motherboards: You will almost definitely run into problems with Linux. I have an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard.

Linux is the fastest-growing embedded operating environment in the world today. It's quickly becoming the single largest operating system platform for embedded computing. As a result, many technology managers must come to grips with the complexity and the dynamics of Open Source software in general and Linux evolution in particular.

Years ago, there was an old way parents were thinking about their kids in my country: «I have made them, I will kill them too.» Does the fact that you created something give you the right to be a dictator?

Ark Linux 2006.1 is out, which ships with the newly-released KDE 3.5.4, and brings a host of other improvements to the distribution. X.Org has also been upgrades to 7.1.1 and AmaroK is at 1.4.1. Numerous bugs were also squashed in the LiveCD version of Ark Linux 2006.1. We have shots up at Phoronix today.

Why is the Reiser4 filesystem not in the Linux kernel? Recently, the question has been discussed on the kernel mailing list, and it's not a pretty sight; anyone who imagines that kernel development is a rational discourse only needs to look at the exchange to be disillusioned. While both sides claim to be arguing technical merits, the discussion spills over into a debate about the advantages of established procedures and policies. It's also turned into a clash of personalities.

Lenovo Group is planning a full embrace for Linux. The PC maker, at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo beginning Aug. 14 , will announce a plan to pre-load Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on one of its ThinkPad notebooks, sources familiar with the two company's plans said.

The OpenVZ project (www.openvz.org) today announced its operating system-level server virtualization software technology is incorporated into Debian GNU/Linux giving users full access to OpenVZ software, which helps increase server utilization rates.

Over the years, I've had a number of people asking me what I believe the problem was with further migration over to Linux by the public at large. To be frank, I don't believe that there is a simple answer to this. To me, there are a number of factors that play a role in keeping Linux out of the mainstream limelight.

These days, the average installation is pretty big - and many of the most popular programs take up huge swaths of space. Even with a 60GB hard drive like the one in my laptop, you still have to pay close attention lest it become Godzilla, The Eater Of All Available Space (and time, too - but we're not talking about Quake III or Xbubble at the moment.)

Free Software Magazine has an interesting article claiming that Red Hat with whither and die at the expense of Ubuntu. It's an interesting theory, but one that is based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of enterprise software purchasing (closed or open source).