FLOSS

Codenamed "Caterpillar", the first beta point on the development path to KDE 4.2 has been reached. The release announcement details the changes, including new desktop effects, task bar grouping, new Plasma applets and Google Gadgets support. KDE fans who're familiar with building the source are encouraged to try it out and submit bug reports.

Fedora 10 has just been released to the waiting masses. Andy Hudson takes the distro for an early test run, exploring the new features and seeing how it stacks up against the other major players in the Linux league...

It's finally over. After more than five years of legal wranglings, courtroom antics and FUD, The SCO Group has received a final judgement. In short, SCO owes Novell over $2.54 million (plus interest) for unjust enrichment. Novell is the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. Pretty much everyone in the Linux community expected this, but we're all glad it has come to an end.

If you've been the unfortunate victim of job cuts in this economic wrongness, you may be tempted to while away the mornings eating Super Noodles and watching Judge Judy. But OpenSUSE Community Manager Joe Brockmeier is urging unemployed IT folks to get involved with FOSS projects as a more valuable use of time. The idea is this: helping out with Free Software brings you new skills and contacts that you can use when the financial facepalms end.

Love Mandriva? Fancy a version with a snappier GUI? XFCELive is a community-based effort to bring the distro and desktop environment closer together, and the 2009.0 release is now available (albeit with a few rough edges -- see the 'Known Issues' bit in the link).

Make Blog has a fascinating picture representing the Linux boot sequence, in which 'nodes' (system calls) are "are laid out using an unweighted force-directed layout algorithm, where each node is simulated as if it were electrically repulsive and had springs between nodes". Yipes. But is it art?

Debian 5.0, aka Lenny, inches closer with the first release candidate of the installer. This page details the most recent improvements and gotchas, and the team is looking for more testers to ensure Debian's famous stability is maintained.

LinuxDevices notes a 49% leap in Linux-powered smartphone shipments over last year, as the market flourishes (with the exception of Symbian). Analysts expect more Linux gains in the next year as Android-based devices get stronger footholds.

The end of October saw the much anticipated release of Ubuntu 8.10 - affectionately called the Intrepid Ibex. It's a release that sees Ubuntu going from strength to strength. And with its popularity reaching stratospheric proportions, TechRadar thought that now was the perfect time to pool together its favourite tips into one place - read more here.

Packed with speakers - some from overseas - the UK Unix User Group's annual Linux Technical Conference visits Manchester (north England) from 7th to 9th November. There's a 25% discount for Linux Format readers! Topics include Grids and Clusters, Power Management, Filesystems, Web Development with Python, Web security... and even how to use Linux to automate your home!

Ubuntu 8.10 is here! Neil Bothwick takes it for an early test run, looking at the new netbook version and installer updates...

Open source/Free Software often gets a bad rap for innovation. It just copies commercial software, right? Not so, as Neil Bothwick explains -- from eye candy to the internet, FOSS has pioneered new technologies and ways of working...

Simple Minds has a detailed look at 13 features and updates in the upcoming Fedora 10 release. These include a faster boot up sequence (yay), better PulseAudio support (woo) and Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (huh? Actually, it's explained in the article). We like.

Three million downoads in the first week -- not too shabby, OOo. PC World reports that 80% of the downloads were on Windows, which isn't really surprising given the state of the market, and that most Linux users will get updates via their distros. We're also hearing that 40% of 3.0 downloaders are now actually using the suite -- the rest are waiting for it to start up.

Having premiered on the T-Mobile G1, Google's Linux-based mobile phone operating system is now a full, open source project. Porters, get coding -- we want to see Android running on the hottest new handheld tech ASAP!

Maybe, just maybe, the whole Linux community can rally around Linux Standards Base version 4 when it arrives. Right now it's in beta stage, with a new application and shell script checker that will (hopefully) make distro-neutral packages easier to create. But will any recent distros actually get in on the action?

Nostradamus didn't see it (at least, according to the interpretations we've read), but the next major release of Lenny has been put back in typical Debian tradition. One developer claimed that the September release plan was "too optimistic", and there are still over 200 release candidate bugs still to be fixed. Place your bets on the actual, final release date in the comments...

After a lengthy development cycle, we have a shiny new version of OpenOffice.org to play around with. But has it been worth the wait? Neil Bothwick rolls up his sleeves and picks apart OOo 3.0's new features, finding out whether it deserves a major version number bump and finally sorts out the performance woes...

Are you bored of the year 2008, what with the global economic woes and rubbish weather (at least in England)? Convince yourself that it's already 2009 with a minty-fresh new distro release. Mandriva 2009.0 includes KDE 4.1.2, kernel 2.6.27, a late release candidate of OpenOffice.org 3.0, and top-notch netbook hardware support. Download from here or snag a copy from the upcoming LXF113 DVD.

Crank up your compiler -- kernel 2.6.27 has arrived, including (deep breath): a new filesystem (UBIFS) optimized for "pure" flash-based storage devices; the page-cache is now lockless; much improved Direct I/O scalability and performance; delayed allocation for ext4; multiqueue networking; an alternative hibernation implementation based on kexec/kdump; data integrity support in the block layer for devices that support it; a simple tracer called ftrace; and loads more tech.