While I was trawling through Net Applications' operating system share trend data for the past 24 months, something struck me. June 08 marked a big month for Linux. The OS saw the largest increase in market share for the whole 2 year period - a growth of 0.12%.

Imagine creating Web-page graphics dynamically using just code. Creating and manipulating images is yours for the doing with the power of PHP. This tutorial steps through using the GD library, showing you how to create and alter images on Web pages. It starts with the GD construct, and then builds on it to showcase graphics techniques.

"Home Automation ... covers many areas, including remote and timed control of lights and electrical home appliances, distributed media services, and communication. Over the last 10 years, many hardware manufacturers have presented their own proprietary solutions to these problems. Unbeknownst to them, a groundswell of developers from around the world has been providing similar solutions to the free and open source community." If you want to know how to remotely tell your computer to switch on the kettle and boil a cup of tea, switch on the lights, or just draw the curtains the read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine

The 2008.0 final release is out! Code-named "It's got what plants crave," this release contains numerous new features including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD. LiveDVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree.

As the Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10) development gets going, many people will probably be wondering what new end-user features they can expect. This article lists the top 5 new features. My Take: Nothing really exciting. I still shiver over the inability of the default Totem installation not de-interlacing my camcomder-derived home videos and DVDs because GStreamer doesn't support it, or no full A/V support on Pidgin yet, or something as simple as this which I've been asking for years now and it would probably take 5 minutes to implement.

KDE 4.1 is supposed to make everything right with the recently troubled desktop. Everyone agrees now that KDE 4.0 was a mistake. However, what the mistake was -- and whose -- is a matter of opinion. KDE developers blame distributions for rushing to include a release that was never intended for everyday use, while users blame developers for changing everything. More here. Also, Tectonic published an article titled "Beyond the desktop with KDE4", while the now well-known for its sarcasm 'Linux Hater' blog has something to say too (warning: some profanity).

For the folks out there that want to start playing with the Android OS now the geniuses over at Unwired View have figured out how to install the Android OS on the Nokia 810N in 2-steps for a total of about 5mins and no sinister hacking.

"Vala is, in some sense, a new programming language. It’s syntax and structure leans heavily towards C#. As Jurg Billeter, the mastermind behind Vala, likes to put it; Vala is an amalgam of different C inspired languages, mostly C++ and C#. An though there is no mercury in this mixture, you'll find many a gold nugget in Vala."

"The mobile phone operating system world was rocked recently by the announcement that Nokia had acquired all of the shares of Symbian that it didn't already own, and that it planned to transition the OS to an open-source licensing model," says DeviceGuru.

The windows port for KDE allows users to install and run KDE applications in Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista . This tutorial will guide you step by step through installing KDE in Windows.

The Firefox project was rewarded on Wednesday when Guinness World Records accepted that the 8,002,530 downloads of Firefox on 'Download Day' in June constituted a world record. Firefox is now officially in the record books for receiving the most downloads from a Web site with a 24-hour period.

This article by Shane Schick looks at changes Steve Ballmer should consider making at Microsoft now that Bill Gates is out the door. A couple of the most interesting: making user education a priority and establishing an open source project.

An opinion article at APCMag: "The focus of Snow Leopard is on core upgrades, not shiny new features. A bedrock focused update that delivers a streamlined, enhanced OS X. Stability. Efficiency. A "new generation of core technologies." All this is about raising the floor on the entire system. Multi-core optimization, support for 16TB RAM (yes, Terabytes), and a language to allow developers to tap the power of the graphics processor are just a few of the key upgrades. But you can't lift the floor and let people walk around where the floor used to be all at the same time. Not without leaving holes for a potential rising damp problem further down the track."

Apple's OS market share increased by nearly 32% in the last year. Windows Vista and Linux also increased their shares by 8% and 18%, respectively, to end the month accounting for 16.14% and 0.88% of the online OS market. The full results from the survey can be found here. The results came as there is increasing speculation about the new version of OS X having a business focus.