"Recently, Ubuntu founder and Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth spoke with The 451 Group at length about Dapper, Ubuntu, and the trends and development of the open source and free software movements as they relate to enterprise information technology. Last week, we ran Part I of a multi-part series in which The 451 Group presents Shuttleworth’s comments along with insight and commentary from 451 Group analysts who cover the worlds of open source and enterprise software."

Computer maker Lenovo will not install or support the Linux operating system on any of its PCs, including ThinkPads and a series of new notebooks, the company said this week. The company is clearly positioning itself as an exclusive partner of Microsoft, several weeks after the companies announced they were "reaffirming" global market development and cooperation agreements. "We will not have models available for Linux, and we do not have custom order, either," said Frank Kardonski, Lenovo's worldwide product manager for Lenovo 3000 offerings. "What you see is what you get. And at this point, it's Windows."

The One Laptop per Child project will make Linux as popular on the desktop as it is on the server today, according to Nicholas Negroponte, head of the project and co-founder of the MIT Media Laboratory. Speaking on the final day of Red Hat's annual user summit, Negroponte told an audience of Linux enthusiasts and technology professionals that the OLPC project will lead to mass adoption of the operating system, if the software that powers it is efficient and usable enough.

Computerworld's Scot Finnie details 20 things you won't like in Windows Vista, with a visual tour to prove it. He says that MS has favored security over end-user productivity, making the user feel like a rat caught in a maze with all the protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes required by the User Account Controls feature. "Business and home users will be nonplussed by the blizzard of protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes required by the User Account Controls feature, for example." Update: Apparantly, Vista Beta 2 sucks up battery juice much faster than XP does.

BetterDesktop has published its research results concerning ease of use and usability on GNOME. "Below are videos that we have taken of user tests. Please consider when watching the videos, that they may touch on many parts of the desktop. For example, a test that deals with changing the background may involve Nautilus or GNOME Control Center. In other words, there is a lot to learn from these videos! In addition to providing the videos, we have also aggregated some of the Data Results to see stats on specific tests. We have also created some Research Reports on this data."

Three or four years ago, open-source providers enjoyed plenty of attention. But now some of the disruptive energy seems to have dropped away, as attention turns increasingly to the collaborative potential of the Web. Google and the buzzword du jour, Web 2.0, are capturing the attention once enjoyed by the struggle between Linux, Windows and Unix. ZDNet UK sat down with Red Hat chief executive Matthew Szulik at the company's user summit in Nashville for a brief discussion on how he intends to keep his company on the cutting edge and battle the biggest threats to its future success.