Installing software on Linux has gotten progressively easier over the years, down to being downright foolproof in Ubuntu's Application Center. However, there is still the problem of each distribution relying on its own frontends and backends, and this needs to be addressed. Members from all the major Linux distributions have held several talks, and have come up with a solution which is already being implemented.

"AMD has announced its support of Open GL 4.1 on Microsoft and Linux platforms in its latest driver release for a number of its graphics cards. The driver release, available on the AMD website for the ATI FirePro, ATI FireGl and AMD Radeon cards, will support OpenGL 4.1 for Microsoft's Windows 7, Vista, XP, as well as Linux."

Well, this is interesting. Research In Motion is hard at work on its PlayBook tablet, as well as on its new mobile operating system, for the device based on QNX. It's no secret that RIM intends to deliver some form of backwards compatibility for its older BlackBarryOS applications. And that's where a golden opportunity arises.

Right, it's good to be back. This is news from last week, but heck, it's relevant for me since I just got my HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7 device. Anyway, if you're running a very large company in the business of selling phones, gadgets, and so on, there are several ways to deal with jailbreakers. It seems like Microsoft is one of the few companies who knows what it needs to do.

Thinking that HP's memristors can't arrive early enough on the market? Here's competition already! A team at North Carolina State University, led by Dr Paul Franzon, has unveiled the "double floating-gate field effect transistor", a component based on the same principles as flash memory which would allow to store data for "a couple of years" in around 15 nanoseconds.

"A class action lawsuit against Microsoft has been filed in Italy by a group claiming that it's too difficult to procure a refund for the copies of Windows that come bundled in new PCs."

"A security incident on Fedora infrastructure has been reported by Jared Smith, Fedora Project's leader, who confirmed that the account of one of its contributors has been compromised. According to preliminary results of an investigation mounted by Fedora Project's Infrastructure Team, the compromise wasn't the result of an exploitation a vulnerability."

"Previously, I demonstrated creating an animatic using Kino. That was an interesting exercise, but Kino is not really up to that kind of job. Blender, on the other hand, has a very nice "video sequence editor" built into it, and it turns out to be very well adapted for this kind of task."

"Fedora developer, Matt Domsch, has announced that Fedora 15 is breaking the conventional ethX naming scheme used for Ethernet devices by adopting a new scheme called Consistent Network Device Naming."

"Sepaton today announced the next-generation operating system for its grid-based deduplication, backup appliance, the S2100-ES2. The new 64-bit operating system, combined with Intel's new Westmere processor, runs the updated appliance at twice the speeds of its predecessor, the company said."

"The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project."

"A team of researchers comprised of members from the Semiconductor Research Corporation and Stanford University has developed a new thermal nanotape which it claims will lead to chips that run cooler and last longer."

"The FreeBSD developers have made available a second release candidate (RC2) for FreeBSD 7.4. This is a precursor to a third release candidate, due next week, as the developers say that there are "several bugs we feel are critical enough to warrant fixing before the 8.2/7.4 releases are finalized". FreeBSD 8.2 saw its second release candidate made available last week."

"Nothing can dampen the spirit surrounding this year's Linux.conf.au in Brisbane, not even a flood crisis, as it officially kicked off in the state's soggy capital today."