Apress' open source series of books recently unveiled Mark Mamone's "Practical Mono", a book targetting new .NET developers. We take a quick look at the book below.

FOSDEM 2006 is approaching. The event will take place on the 25th and 26th of February in Brussels, Belgium. The FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event for the community and organised by the community. FOSDEM 's goal is to provide free and open source developers and communities a place to go over the latest developments in the free and open source arena and to promote the development and the benefits of free and open source solutions. Read more for some interviews with key speakers at FOSDEM.

"With the success of the iPod and Apple's bulging bank balance, the time has never been better for Apple to grow itself through acquisition. The thought that Apple might be interested in purchasing the struggling PDA manufacturer Palm has been floating around for a while. Steve Jobs even tried to purchase the company in the late 90s, according to the San Jose Mercury News. However, the rumor has recently gained some traction with the call by multiple investors for Palm to sell itself. Also, some key Palm employees, such as co-founder and former company president Donna Dubinsky, have previously worked with Apple."

MEPIS, one of the more popular Debian-derived distributions, may be moving in a new direction soon. MEPIS founder Warren Woodford is considering building future MEPIS releases from Ubuntu sources rather than from Debian. SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3, which is scheduled for release today, has been quite a challenge to build, according to Woodford. "It's taking up all my time, fighting the Etch pool... We've had a lot of trouble, because the Debian community has become so active, it's been difficult to get this out, so I'm looking at alternatives to getting out stable releases."

Chip firm Intel has told customers close to its plans that a combination of the Conroe next gen chip and the 965 chipset will be good to go for when Microsoft Vista arrives. And it has a new 'platform' to play with. Averill Pro will be introduced in the third quarter with Conroe, the Q965 Express chipset but matched with 'Averill Fundamental', which will use the Q963 Express and the Pentium D chip. Intel now estimates it will be able to shift more than two thirds of its desktop processors to dual core by year end.

"CodeWeavers and Linspire Wednesday jointly announced the release of CrossOver Office 5.0 for Linspire, a specially optimized version of the product for the Linspire Linux distribution. CrossOver Office enables Linspire users to run Windows applications natively from their Linspire desktop."

"Microsoft may not make flawless software, but its proprietary strategy is hard to fault. In particular, Microsoft has mastered desktop lock-in, undermining users' confidence in any alternatives and creating a slew of minor difficulties that irritate those who do switch. Two themes dominate the stories I hear about the tribulations of using and adopting non-Microsoft business desktops: the difficulty in finding compatible hardware and the stranglehold Microsoft Word has on users. In the last week, IT pros have shared their experiences with these two adoption inhibitors. They're representative of other stories I've heard."

After Xgl, Novell now also released Compiz, their OpenGL compositing manager. From the readme file: "Compiz is an OpenGL compositing manager that use GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap for binding redirected top-level windows to texture objects. It has a flexible plug-in system and it is designed to run well on most graphics hardware."

"The third International Forum on Free Knowledge brought together many groups and individuals interested in the development of free software worldwide to the city of Maracaibo. One reason Venezuela choose to host this event is because starting in January (2006), their new free software law, directive 3.390, comes into effect, which mandates all government agencies to migrate to free software over a two year period. I was invited to speak about Telephonia Libre: the use of free software in telecommunications."

No Starch Press sent me a review copy of The Book of Postfix (long ago!) and I was pleasantly surprised to find it ranks among the best technical tutorial books I've encountered. Correction: I did miss the SQL database integration section, which is well-covered, in my original review.

Even though I ordered Zeta from an official US reseller store, the product box I received was in the German language (at least part of it was). I recognized the company name, yellowTAB, and the name of the operating system, Zeta. But all other information printed on the box, including the system requirements, were printed in German.

Yesterday, VNUnet.com published a story claiming that there was unrest within OpenOffice.org over Sun's continueing ownership of the underlying code. IBM, Sun, and now the OpenOffice.org community manager himself all say 'no way'.

GNOME 2.12.3 has been released. This will be the final release in the 2.12 branch, as GNOME 2.14 is already on its way. Read the release notes (platform, desktop, and bindings), download the source code (platform, desktop, and bindings), or just wait until your distributor of choice packages it for you.

"This interview with Opera Software CEO and co-founder Jon S. von Tetzchner covers the Norwegian browser company's history, products, and roadmap. It sheds light on the growing importance of Linux in the embedded market, and the growing importance of the embedded market to Opera."