"The Ubuntu team is proud to present the 6th Alpha test, called Flight 6 of our next release, Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake). With Flight 6 comes additional Look-and-Feel improvements, Live-CD installer enhancements, GNOME 2.14 final, and much more." Download the regular Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Edubuntu. As usual, PowerPC, x86, and x86-64 are supported with both live CDs and install CDs.

"The L4/Darwin project is an experimental port of Darwin to the L4 microkernel to study the characteristics of a large-scale microkernel-based system. It includes a port of IOKit to L4, a modified libc to communicate with the Darbat Server, and of course XNU with many of the machine-dependent parts heavily modified (pmap, thread/task creation, etc.) but much left unchanged (most of BSD, and large parts of OSFMK work without modification)."

"Over all, Fedora Core 5 seems to be alot more of a solid distribution than the last time I ran it (FC3), they finally got rid of that nasty up2date that seemed to hang at the worst possibly opportunities - when you're 98% of the way there. The applications also seemed to be tested alot more than previous releases, and the speed as improved substantially, especially with GTK; whether its due to the compile, cairo or some other mystical voodoo I don't understand, what ever the case, the improvement is great. Over all, this is probably the best distribution I've tried; if you're looking for an easy to use, no fuss UNIX-like desktop, look no further than Fedora Core 5."

LinxForums gives short overviews of the ten major distributions, and concludes: "People often ask 'so which distribution is right for me?' The answer is very simple: 'It depends!' It depends on your needs, it depends on your experience, on your philosophy or your tastes. It depends on a lot of things, and even if you found the one you preferred among these 10 majors distributions, don't forget that there are about 340 other distributions available, which could potentially suit your needs. If you're ready for the adventure, go and explore."

"The Firebird Project is pleased to announce the release of the first release candidate of Firebird 2.0, for final testing. Download kits are available for Windows and Linux, including x64 Linux. However, due to hardware failure on the Windows build system, there will be initial delays in accessing the Win32 kits. Patience please!"

The OpenSUSE team has released beta 9 of OpenSUSE 10.1. Again, no changelog, no release notes, nothing, so I cannot inform you about what is new, improved, or fixed. Download the CD set and see for yourself. Locations are listed in the announcement.

Normally only paid members get to beta test future Linspire releases, but the Italian branch of Linspire has opened the Italian beta program for Linspire 5.1 for everyone. Now, the catch obviously is that, well, everything's Italian, but with some guesswork and a dictionary you'll get there. Italian has a good one-to-one correspondence between vowels/consonants and sounds, so pronunciation shouldn't be too hard.

"Microsoft has lost a head-to-head competition with OpenDocument Format supporting software, with the decision of the Bristol, England City Council to convert its 5500 desktops from Office to Sun's ODF compliant StarOffice office suite. The City, after extensive study, concluded that it would save 60% of total costs of ownership over a five year period by making the switch. And, as an assist to cities, it has made the documentation of its analysis and other materials available at the Open Source Academy Website in the UK."

Microsoft at the 11th hour has extended support for a popular tool that lets users scan Windows computers for unpatched programs and other security flaws. They originally planned to end support for version 1.2 of the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer on Friday. However, following user feedback, the company has now extended support until an undetermined date.

The European Commission said on Thursday it will need to spend a number of weeks analysing the information that Microsoft has presented in its hearing before making a final decision on whether the company will be fined for not complying with a 2004 antitrust ruling. The hearing, which is taking place on Thu and Fri, gives Microsoft an opportunity to argue why it believes it has complied with the ruling.

FreeBSD's Security officer Colin Percival seeks sponsorship. This has happened before with other FreeBSD contributors. "I'm hoping to raise $15000 Canadian (about US$13000) to pay me to work full-time on FreeBSD for 16 weeks over the summer. This will allow me to devote more time to my role as FreeBSD Security Officer, perform a complete overhaul of FreeBSD Update, and make some significant improvements to Portsnap."

"Novell's new SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is beating Microsoft Vista to market by months, and the Xen virtualization features in the upcoming SuSE Enterprise Server are right on target. In short, Novell's Linux roadmap looks great. Now, can Novell get business customers to travel its road?"

The Nexenta team has released alpha 4. This is a bug fix release. Nexenta OS alpha 4 is based on Open Solaris build 36, utilizes Debian's apt-get package system, and has GNOME 2.12 as its default desktop. Both a live CD as well as an install CD are available. Visit the getting started page, check out the changelog, and download.

"This time it's patents that will ensure the downfall of GNU/Linux and with it, the entire world of open source. But before hanging up your certified geek propeller-hat and retraining as a dental hygienist, you might want to consider the following brief history of Microsoft's use of fear, uncertainty, and doubt as a weapon against GNU/Linux." Hopelessly pro-everything-that-is-Linux, but an interesting overview of Microsoft's approach to Linux over the years nonetheless. Elsewhere, the Guardian looks at the challanges Microsoft is currently facing.