While Linus Torvalds is the main figurehead for the Linux kernel, there are of course countless other individuals contributing to the Linux kernel - some more than others. A contributor of key importance is Andrew Morton, maintainer of the -mm tree. Since changes in how Morton handles things are on the horizon, LWN.net sent Morton a few questions.

A new major release of Novell's community-supported distro openSUSE 11 is now available and can be downloaded from the mirrors. Linux Format has a hands-on look at the new installer, SLAB menu and Compiz Fusion, and weighs up whether the distro can fight competition from Ubuntu and Fedora. Is this the start of a new era for SUSE?

Application virtualization veteran Citrix, who last year purchased Xensource, today announced their intention to deliver XenDesktop, based on their thin client technology, for the iPhone. While similar applications exist in the form of VNSea, Citrix is a major player in virtualization and this certainly bodes well for those who want to connect to remote devices via their iPhone. Citrix demo'ed their wifi-only application at the Citrix Application Delivery Conference in Australia this week.

BetaNews reports that popular news aggregator Reddit has gone open source. The Reddit source code is available now and is written largely in Python.

Michael Crider at Freesoftware Magazine has written a fine, detailed howto on using Mail Merge in OpenOffice, full of useful tips and screenshots. This is one of the better OpenOffice.org tutorials.

In this instalment of Automation for the people, automation expert Paul Duvall explains how you can use open source tools to automate the generation of Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagrams, build figures, entity-relationship diagrams (ERDs), and even user documentation.

Microsoft has introduced its first-ever embedded OS for portable devices that use GPS (global positioning system) and maps to get people where they want to go. Windows Embedded NavReady 2009 is aimed at companies building handheld electronic navigation devices and includes several features to make them Web-friendly, such as easy connections to online services and the Internet, as well as links to mobile phones via Bluetooth, and to Windows-based PCs. The aim of the new OS is to spread the popularity of portable navigation devices (PND) by adding or enhancing new features such as Internet connectivity and services. PNDs are among the hottest electronic devices this year.

RoughlyDrafted magazine has been investigating the details of Apple OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" operating system revision. Last week, they shared an article outlining "what's new in Snow Leopard. They are also outlining myths of Snow Leopard. Although very few details are available, it certainly has not resulted in a shortage of discussion of the next operating system from Cupertino.

The launch of Microsoft's new interoperability principles have been both cautiously welcomed and sceptically scrutinised as the company goes about convincing the IT industry that it is genuine in its pursuit to provide interoperability with rival products, more consumer choice, less vendor lock-in and greater collaboration with the open source community. Here, Microsoft Australia CTO Greg Stones gives some obviously polished PR-approved responses to questions from Computerworld regarding the motivations behind support for ODF and PDF, what the software giant is really gaining by providing support to rival formats, and the ambiguities in its Open Specification Promise. He also gives a painfully polished response to CNN's senior editor's claims that the company is trying to eliminate free software.Typical Microsoft PR response to tough questions, but interesting nonetheless....

The PHP Development Tools (PDT) plug-in, when installed with Eclipse Europa, gives you that ability to quickly write and debug PHP scripts and pages. PDT supports two debugging tools: XDebug and the Zend Debugger. Learn how to configure PDT for debugging PHP scripts and discover which perspectives you use when taking closer looks at your scripts.

Mandriva has released the planned schedule and technical specifications for its next release, Mandriva Linux 2009. These can be found on the Mandriva Wiki. The schedule calls for a first alpha release on June 25th, with the final release set for early October. Planned features include KDE 4, Firefox 3, OpenOffice.org 3, a new design for the installer, a live distribution upgrade mode for MandrivaUpdate, and improvements to many of the Mandriva tools. Take a look and see what you may find on your system when the final Mandriva Linux 2009 release is available.

The NextGen PC Design Competition is a competition set up by Microsoft to allow people to design their idea of the next generation computer. "Influence tomorrow's digital lifestyle with your vision of the Next-Gen PC. Change the way people pursue their passions by designing the ultimate Next-Gen Windows-based PC. Give them everything they need to do what they love, easily, powerfully, and enjoyably. Introduce the Next-Gen PC. It's your design."

"Nvidia pitches its Tesla hardware as a magical solution for the world’s toughest computing problems. Just move your code that runs well across many processors over to the Tesla boards, and Shazam!. You enjoy sometimes 400 per cent improvements in overall performance. Despite such mind-blowing increases in horsepower, Tesla continues to occupy a space that one could characterize as ultra-niche. Only the brave few have navigated Nvidia’s CUDA programming apparatus to tweak their code for the general purpose graphics processors inside of the Tesla systems. That ultra-niche, however, may grow into a niche over the coming year thanks to the introduction of more powerful Tesla systems."

I took them 15 years. During those years, the project grew from something that didn't work, to something that sometimes under special circumstances could maybe perhaps work, to something that sometimes just worked, all the way to something that works in a number of pre-defined cases. You won't believe it, but Wine 1.0 is here.