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I embrace the uniqueness of the free software and open source communities, and this edition of TLWIR focuses on some of the finest examples of that which differentiates our way of thinking.

Of course we couldn’t let the firing of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz slide by without getting the top ten treatment. After all, they fired her on the telephone, then she went and showed us that she knows some words that are, er, not very polite. On top of that, she’s been willing to ignore a non-disparagement clause in her contract, possibly forfeiting over $14 million in money owed to her by Yahoo. Perhaps you can see how we might find this to be fodder for humor, no?

This tutorial explains how to create an OpenVZ template for Debian Wheezy (Debian Testing) that you can use to create virtual Debian Wheezy machines under OpenVZ. I searched for a Debian Wheezy OpenVZ template, but couldn't find one, that's why I decided to create it myself. This guide can also be used for creating Debian Lenny templates and templates for recent Ubuntu versions.

On Tuesday at XDC2011 Chicago I hosted a question and answer panel about contributing to X.Org, Mesa, and the Linux kernel. Much of the information presented, however, is relevant to any open-source / free software project. The panel participants were largely graphics driver developers that started off contributing to open-source when at university and some of them have since moved on to working for major Linux companies, i.e. Intel and Red Hat. The talk was very interesting and Chicago computer science students were free to ask questions of them.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Much work done on Plasma/Active, including homescreen loading, AppletContainer and activity switching optimization. Dolphin gets a Bazaar version control plugin. Kst now supports scripting. Line modification system added in Kate. Skrooge gets a copy menu for cells. Owncloud has an initial implementation of password reset and calendar updates. There are optimizations in Public Transport and Calligra. Network Management sorts connections by type and then by activation state. libqapt supports APT MultiArch. Calligra gets bugfixes, mostly in support of file formats. Read the rest of the Digest here. read more

Red-headed penguin stepchild Cinderella Comment Intel has jumped into bed with Google, but the palpable excitement emanating from both companies seems incongruous - as it signals doom for the chip giant's child from its previous marriage of convenience, MeeGo.…

Bodhi Linux 1.2.0 has been out of the gate for a full week now and I must say we are truly pleased with the response we have received. There has been a spike of new users present on our forums and our ISO image has seen over 16,000 downloads in this week's worth of time.

The ephcom-2.0.2 software package gives users convenient access to the JPL ephemerides, which represent mankind's best knowledge of the positions and velocities of all major bodies of the solar system over centuries (short ephemerides) and millennia (long ephemerides).

The file system in Linux can be intimidating coming from other operating systems like Microsoft Windows. At first glance it may seem that there is no organisation to the files, but there is a method to this madness. After spending some more time with the file system in Linux, it will seem a lot more secure and organised.

Tom Stellard, the former Google Summer of Code student who worked on R300 GLSL improvements and a new register allocator, is now working for AMD and his work is focused on bringing up open-source OpenCL / GPGPU support in the Radeon Linux driver...

Microsoft rolls 'cloud-based operating system' Preview "The cloud is a tectonic shift," said Microsoft's corporate vice president of server and cloud Bill Laing, introducing an in-depth press preview of Windows Server 8 and mixing metaphors with abandon.…

A developers' conference is something similar to a meeting of evangelistic Christians or Islamic fundamentalists - no non-believers or sceptics are around, the cheers are raucous and come without prompting, and all the focus is on the man on the stage.

VMware announced a new version of its Linux-compatible VMware Workstation 8 software, designed to make it easier to build, share, and upload virtual machines (VMs) to cloud environments. VMware Workstation 8 offers 50 new features, with a special focus on connections with VMware's cloud-oriented virtualization software, including new remote connections and drag and drop to hosts running in vSphere.

CentOS 5.7 is based on the upstream release EL 5.7 and includes packages from all variants including server and client. All upstream repositories have been combined into one to make it easier for end users to work with. CentOS conforms fully to the upstream vendor's redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. CentOS 5.7 is the seventh update to the CentOS 5 distribution series, it contains a lot of bug fixes, updates and new functionality. CentOS 5.7 Screen Shots

Former US CIO Vivek Kundra wonders if cloud security is really a valid concern when most companies and governments outsource many kinds of services absent of these worries.

Well Minecraft fans the day is upon us..

You can now experience a very Unity like environment in your Android device using GO Ubuntu Unity theme. GO Ubuntu Unity is basically a theme for GO Launcher EX which is one of the best launchers available for Android.

There's more good news out of the 2011 X.Org Developers' Conference in Chicago. Besides the big news that the S3TC patent might be invalid, PathScale has a working OpenCL compute stack, and other events, here's something very exciting: Intel really expects to have working OpenGL 3.0 support in Mesa for hardware drivers by the end of this calendar year!

Development on the free desktop have been instructive over the last few years. First, KDE stumbled and recovered with the KDE 4 series. This year, GNOME and Ubuntu introduced radically new desktops. Although both GNOME and Ubuntu seem to ignore the complaints pouring in from users while they continue on their course, Bruce Byfield wonders: Could the disastrous receptions have been avoided?

After Lindependence in 2008, thoughts turned to bigger and better large-scale events, though they never materialized. Even after a few years, Larry the Free Software Guy would still like to see these mega-events brought to life: Tuxstock (or Fossapalooza, for the younger crowd) and ELVIS: Expanding Linux Venues In the South, among others.