So, it's no secret that the Linux desktop - at least, the GNOME-side of things - is a bit in a state of disarray. Unity hasn't exactly gone down well with a lot of people, and GNOME 3, too, hasn't been met with universal praise. So, what to do? Linux Mint, currently one of the most popular Linux distributions out there, thinks they are on to the solution with their latest release, Linux Mint 12.

Puppy Linux is a small sub-130 MB distro popular for its high performance, adaptability, and ability to run on older hardware. The project just announced the new Racy Puppy, a version enhanced to run on new PCs. Racy includes Xorg 7.6 and the 3.0.7 kernel. Racy derives from Wary Puppy, a long term support release optimzed for older hardware. Puppy also offers Slacko and Lucid versions, for full compatibility with Slackware and Ubuntu, respectively.

"A little over one year after the 1.0 release, I'm happy to announce the 1.6 release of the GNUstep Objective-C runtime. This provides a superset of the functionality of Apple's Mac OS X 10.7/iOS 5 runtimes and provides a solid foundation for Objective-C and Objective-C++ development on Free Software platforms."

While the US is still pondering SOPA, we just got some absolutely fantastic news out of Europe. The European Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, has just ruled that P2P filters installed by ISPs violate the European Directive on electronic commerce as well as fundamental rights . This is a hugely important ruling that effectively protects all member states of the European Union from ever being subjected to ISP filtering and spying.

It's a somewhat uneasy subject among websites such as OSNews - advertisements, the site's readability, and how to get a little more income without compromising the pleasure of using the site. Brent Simmons published a blog post about the topic which has been making its rounds across the web. The gist: websites, save for a precious few, seem to be getting progressively worse.

"Australian researcher Silvio Cesare has released a tool capable of automatically detecting bugs and vulnerabilities in embedded Linux libraries. The script correlates vulnerability advisory CVEs for third party libraries to determine if holes have carried over to Linux platforms or have not been patched."

Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister gets into the holiday spirit with a post that gives thanks to technical advances for developers, including open source tools, modern IDEs, and distributed version control. 'I'm old enough to remember when performance-critical routines meant hand-coded assembly language and sometimes even keying in machine code as hexadecimal digits. We've come a long way since those bad old days, and not surprisingly we owe a lot of our progress to technology. So for this Thanksgiving, here are just a few of the modern advances for which I, as a developer, give thanks.' What are you giving thanks to?

Tiny Core Linux is an 11 MB graphical Linux based on the 2.6 kernel, BusyBox, Tiny X, Fltk, and Flwm. It's a minimal but extendable distro that runs from memory and loads from any bootable device. Version 4.1 has just been released with many improvements detailed in the release announcement, including app upgrades and bug fixes. 4.1 continues Tiny Core's rapid evolution, which has seen point release upgrades every month or two.

"The US International Trade Commission today said that Apple is not violating patents held by S3 Graphics in its products and is terminating its investigation on the matter. The decision follows a mixed ruling in July, where an ITC judge found Apple to be infringing on two of S3 Graphics' patents, while not infringing on two others. A final decision on the matter was due last week, with the ITC electing to postpone it until today for reasons unknown." That's one of the 3958354635635627658358365367 cases closed.

"The PyPy development team has released version 1.7 of its 'very compliant' Python interpreter with integrated tracing just-in-time compiler. The developers say that the focus of the new update was widening the range of code that PyPy can speed up, which the developers refer to as the 'sweet spot'. In their benchmarks, PyPy 1.7 performs approximately 30 per cent faster than 1.6 and 'up to 20 times faster on some benchmarks'."

With the announcement of its new Search app, Google gave iPad users more than just a slick and well-made native search app that bests the experience on any Android tablet. It also managed to squeeze the core elements of Chrome OS into Apple's ecosystem.

"The world of software is made slightly crazy because of the huge flexibility within any computer language. Once you have absorbed the idea of a compiler written in the language it compiles what else is there left to gawp at? But... a Java Virtual Machine JVM written in JavaScript seems like another level of insanity."

The Business Software Alliance is starting to backpedal from SOPA. "Valid and important questions have been raised about the bill. It is intended to get at the worst of the worst offenders. As it now stands, however, it could sweep in more than just truly egregious actors. To fix this problem, definitions of who can be the subject of legal actions and what remedies are imposed must be tightened and narrowed. Due process, free speech, and privacy are rights cannot be compromised. And the security of networks and communications is indispensable to a thriving Internet economy. Some observers have raised reasonable questions about whether certain SOPA provisions might have unintended consequences in these areas. BSA has long stood against filtering or monitoring the Internet. All of these concerns should be duly considered and addressed." Is the public outrage working?

"The Stop Online Piracy Act is being constructed to allow a stranglehold on the American Internet. Make no mistake. Its constructors are building it with this intent in mind. Just like the Great Firewall of China, the Stop Online Piracy Act is a misnomer. Hidden behind an innocuous name, the bill's intent is not to stem piracy as its proponents suggest, its true intent is to control the Internet itself." McCarthy would be proud.