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Now that we have open source beer, open source cars, and open source photography, a social networking service run by Red Hat and based around open source software comes as no surprise. The name of the project is Mugshot, and the official definition describes it as "an open project to create live social experiences around entertainment." That may sound vague, but it's actually a useful service, and there are quite a few things you can do with it.

This guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen on an already working Debian Etch system. You can find all the software used here in the Etch repository, so no external files or compilation are needed.

Ingo Molnar reviewed Con Kolivas [interview]'s swap-prefetching patches suggesting that they were ready for inclusion in the mainline kernel, "I've reviewed it once again and in the !CONFIG_SWAP_PREFETCH case it's a clear NOP, while in the CONFIG_SWAP_PREFETCH=y case all the feedback i've seen so far was positive. Time to have this upstream and time for a desktop-oriented distro to pick it up." He went on to describe swap prefetch, "to the desktop user this is a speculative performance feature that he is willing to potentially waste CPU and IO capacity, in expectation of better performance. On the conceptual level it is _precisely the same thing as regular file readahead_. (with the difference that to me swapahead seems to be quite a bit more intelligent than our current file readahead logic.)"

Windows is loved more than Linux by a factor of 2.4, but hated by a factor of 9.8 according to Google search results.

The optimist in me cheers. The optimist in me believes, its tiny voice raised to the heavens, like a mouse on LSD. Sorry, but it is a very very small optimist...

The executive editor of DesktopLinux.com installs Kubuntu Feisty Fawn on his "trusty old Thinkpad testbed" and relates his experiences. The verdict? Thanks to a little assistance from Automatix2, Feisty's a real winner!

I'm tired of debating the relative merits of Linux's various desktop environments and distributions. Tired of reading about them, tired of writing about them. So today an experiment begins: My month at the command line. I'm going back. To the $ prompt. No GNOME. No KDE. Not even Xfce, IceWM or Fluxbox. No X at all. Just the console.

Microsoft Corp. is resuming its pursuit of search engine operator Yahoo Inc. that could help it better compete with Web search leader Google Inc., published reports said Friday.

[Its not Open Source related but certainly of interest around here. - Scott]

Speaking UNIX is simply a matter of building a sentence. An executable is a verb, output is a noun, and the shell operator is a conjunction. Virtually all non-trivial problems require you to filter good data from bad. Discover the many UNIX command line utilities that use regular expressions to discern the relevant from the irrelevant.

The Mozilla Quality weblog has announced a Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.4 and 1.5.0.12 Community Test Day tomorrow. The Community Test Day will allow interested members of the Mozilla community to test release candidates of the upcoming Firefox 2.0.0.4 and 1.5.0.12 releases. The Mozilla Wiki has a page with full details about the Firefox 2.0.0.4 and 1.5.0.12 Community Test Day, which will take place on Friday between 7:00am and 5:00pm Pacific Daylight Time (2:00pm and 12:00pm UTC/GMT).

This article shows you how to use the built-in debugging features in the Eclipse Platform for debugging software projects.

He ooh'ed and ahh'ed over the transparency settings in the window decorations and the multiple desktop possibilities available to him. I didn't think it was a good idea to show him Beryl just yet. There is only so much one can take at a time.

Think Tank 2007 publishes 14-page Executive Summary Report with highlights of latest trends in commercial open source from more than 35 CEOs, 16 CIOs/CTOs of Global 2000 organizations, and leading attorneys and venture capitalists

The e-mail and calendar server software start-up adds support for the up-and-coming version of Linux.

Comodo today the launch of Red Hat- and CentOS-based versions of their back office server suite, Zero Touch Linux (ZTL). ZTL is a complete suite of Linux server applications centrally controlled by a user friendly web-based interface. The new versions compatible with Red Hat and CentOS, join the existing Trustix Secure Linux based version - providing administrators with greater flexibility and choice.

Following up to feedback on his merge plans, Andrew Morton [interview] posted an updated summary of what he is pushing upstream for inclusion in the upcoming 2.6.22 kernel. His list included, "a few serial bits, a few pcmcia bits, one little security patch, the blackfin architecture, small h8300 update, small alpha update, swsusp updates, m68k bits, and lots of UML updates." He also noted that he'll push some of the memory management queue including, "an enhancement to /proc/pid/smaps to permit monitoring of a running program's working set. The SLUB allocator, it's pretty green but I do want to push ahead with this pretty aggressively with a view to replacing slab altogether. Generic pagetable quicklist management. We have x86_64 and ia64 and sparc64 implementations, but I'll only include David's sparc64 implementation here. I'll send the x86_64 and ia64 implementations through maintainers."

Yesterday Trolltech released the second beta of Qt Jambi, the Qt API for Java. With this release we also released the source code including the Generator under GPL, opening the option for making KDE libs accessible to Java. Though it does not work together with gcj, it does work together with the open source Harmony Virtual machine and runtime.

You get a hands-on demonstration of advanced editing techniques, including how to perform a recursive edit, mark and use rectangles of text, and handle complex selection techniques using the kill ring and the secondary selection.

Most presentations from the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) conference held Apr. 17-19, 2007 in Santa Clara, Calif. are now available at the CELF WiKi. The event featured 52 deeply technical presentations, many describing original kernel development projects aimed at improving Linux for use in devices.

Puppy Linux is a lightweight live Linux distribution that you can boot and run from a CD, USB stick, or DVD. One of its features is the ability to create specialized "pups" -- new versions of Puppy Linux geared toward a specific purpose. Digipup is one such example, with a focus on amateur radio. I spun it up, and found Digipup to be a great way to check out amateur radio utilities for Linux.