"In the short time that I've spent using Ubuntu 5.10, I've really come to like it. The installation was painless, all my hardware was detected and configured correctly, package management was easy, and the clean-cut GNOME desktop is terrific." In addition, here's a guide on setting up Ubuntu as a server.

Philip Langdale of the Galeon team just announced that some major Galeon developers decided at the GNOME summit that the way forward for Galeon (which hasn't gotten much development in the last few months) was to shift focus to expanding the power of Epiphany's extensions system, and coding Galeon functionality as Epiphany extensions.

In the few short years of its existence, Google has come a long way, simultaneously striking fear in the hearts of major players in the computer industry and also arousing their curiosity. While the company is keeping all competitors on their toes, it poses a special threat to one particular company -- Microsoft. Why? Because Google's existing and potential products -- as well as those of other firms -- raise the specter that Microsoft may witness an erosion of its control over the platform for the next generation of software application development, according to Wharton faculty members who follow the technology sector. Just how serious is this threat and what is Microsoft doing to combat it?

Novell is expected to initiate a major round of layoffs that could cut 1000 or more jobs in an attempt to restore the server software company's financial strength, according to employees familiar with the plan.

Microsoft met with the OSI board this week to discuss their new Shared Source licences. "After their announcement this week, MS did meet with a quorum of the OSI Board and we discussed our commitment to equal application of the license approval process and gave them very preliminary feedback on the licenses as they appear on the MSDN Web site. So far, MS's licenses have not yet been submitted to License-Discuss for public discussion, but OSI is hopeful that they will be," OSI stated. Other OSS prominents, like Tim o'Reilly and, believe it or not, the FSF, have already been positive about the new licenses.

OpenOffice.org's latest update includes a database that matches Microsoft's popular and competing Access database, experts say. The stand-alone database rounds out the offering by bringing long-missing, important database power to users. Users will be able to create stand-alone databases, associated forms, reports and queries, much as with Microsoft's extremely popular and widely used Access database.

In his blog, Aaron Siego reveals that in Q1 2006 Trolltech is going to release a technical preview of officially supported Java bindings for Qt 4, and that Qt 4.1 has built-in SVG support and PDF generation.

Claiming that the iPod Nano has a widespread propensity for scratching easily, lawyers this week filed a class action suit against Apple Computer on behalf of those who have purchased the diminutive music player.

After roughly 12 years of work, the Wine Project is about to take its widely used Windows translation layer to a place it has not been in all that time: beta. Wine Project leader Alexandre Julliard, who has worked on the software nearly since its beginning in 1993 and maintained it since 1994, said in an interview yesterday that the beta release is "a matter of days away." He has since updated that forecast and said it would be released on Tuesday, October 25th.

Mad Penguin has released a lengthy review of OpenSUSE 10 complete with screenshots and Flash movie of the installation process.

In Xcode, projects organize files and resources used to build a software product. Read this article to learn how Xcode handles projects and how best to work with them. Other recently posted dev articles include "Introduction to AGL Programming Guide", "Introduction to Bonjour", "Writing PCI Drivers".

"LG3D LiveCD is an interesting project incorporating Sun Microsystems' Project Looking Glass - a Java-based technology that attempts to bring a richer user experience to the desktop and applications via 3D windowing and visualisation capabilities. The newly released version 2.3 is considered to be the project's first stable release. Based on SLAX 'Popcorn', but enhanced with Firefox, Gaim, working NVIDIA graphics driver, and copy2ram support, the live CD boots directly into a great-looking 3D desktop with many interesting capabilities (see this document for hints to navigate the 3D workspace)."

Access Co Ltd, a mobile browser and content delivery developer that recently acquired PalmSource, has acknowledged that the unit's Palm operating system has a limited future. Access instead appears ready to focus on Linux-based offerings, suggesting that Linux development opportunities were the reason behind its purchase of PalmSource after all. Update: Apparently the marketing/PR department of PalmSource got worked up at the CBR article. Maybe Access is too truthful for their taste?

A few days after Mark Shuttleworth, Gaël Duval, founder of Linux Mandrake, now Mandriva, posted a FAQ related to his distribution. He addresses some controversial issues such as Will Mandriva ever demand licence fees?, How can a free software based company be sustainable? and even Why is the default desktop in Mandriva Linux blue?