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If you've been wanting to use voice and video chat on Linux (our top video chat request), then we have good news for you: it's now available! Visit gmail.com/videochat to download the plugin and get started. Voice and video chat for Linux supports Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions, and RPM support will be coming soon.

Recent discussions around the so-called “Open Core” model for open source have been remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, because not content with one burst of feverish blogging and counterblogging, people came back for more, responding to a separate post about business models with yet more arguments and counter-arguments on the subject of Open Core. Secondly – and perhaps more remarkably – those discussions ultimately led to an entirely fresh thought: that we are about to enter a new phase in open source business, one that places community and collaboration at its heart.

I've been working as a freelancer for almost a year now, and I cannot help noticing how free software helps making this possible. Working in an international setting, most of the work is done from my home office. This requires techniques to get the work done. Small motivational "rewards" (or really fun customer assignments so that one forgets lunch...) The other half is the communication with the customers itself. This is where free software enters the picture.

A check over at Planet Debian revealed a lot of chatter about Debian's 17th birthday. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in the Debian Project, past and present, for providing a distribution that has been invaluable to me since I began using Linux in 2007. Debian consistently runs on more machines — and runs better — than just about anything else out there.

This how-to describes the process of setting up an intranet based print server using Ubuntu server. By using CUPS SAMBA and SWAT the final product is a webgui based solution to a headless print server.

For those of you who ave ever tried Linux Mint, a distro which is run off the back of Ubuntu, you will have noticed that it has it’s own special and somewhat unique gnome menu to select your applications to run, folders to browse etc

"If you don't like Windows so much then don't use it!" This is something I have been told more than once (sometimes in not those kind of words) by various people when we have been discussing operating systems. As much as I would like to take their suggestion, the fact is I can't.

Simon thinks that having consumer-friendly standards is a good and useful thing. Hardware manufacturers, for different reasons, tend to agree. Join this Linux User & Developer columnist on a journey through proprietary hell...

When you buy an ebook using your Kindle, there’s a 99% chance it’s a DRM file. That means you won’t be able to read it anywhere else but on your Kindle. And we won’t accept that. To be able to convert that file and remove its DRM protection, you need a set of Python scripts called MobiDeDRM.

After 2 long years, Google finally releases Google Voice and Video Chat for Linux err.. not entirely though. Only a DEB package is available now. And hence only Debian based distros like Ubuntu can enjoy the merits of these changes for now.

Much of the focus of desktop Linux, and regrettably even Linux in the data center, is a slow and steady migration away from the command line towards GUI tools and interfaces. While this is great news for the Linux and open source community at large, many basic Unix skills get overlooked by new users. Back when I was first indoctrinated into the mysteries of Unix, the guru I studied under scoffed at my reliance on the tools available in Mandrake to build a LAMP server. "Why don't you build it like you know what you're doing?" He would ask. "Why don't you build it with OpenBSD?"

A version of Flash is being built using Java, two years after Adobe Systems opened the player's closed formats to external inspection. Programmer Joa Ebert has demonstrated a Java build of Flash executing SWF. The player is apparently called JITB, and it was recently unveiled at an event in San Francisco.

In the previous articles, Getting Started with Blender’s Particle System and Getting Started with Blender’s Particle System- A Sequel, we discussed about the general usage and concepts behind Blender's Particle System and found some cool ways to extend it further. We also discussed several types of the particle system as well as some practical results that can be derived from it like: dust, smoke, fire/flame, bubbles, rock slide animation, and hair/fur/grass.

The days of DIY system administration are rapidly coming to a close. Why? Because the open source tools available are just too good not to use. Presenting Bcfg2, Cfengine, Chef and Puppet. This summer the USENIX 2010 conference in Boston hosted the first Configuration Management Summit on automating system administration using open source configuration management tools. The summit brought together developers, power users and new adopters.

Google is now allowing developers to upload applications to the as-yet-un-open Chrome Web Store, an online gallery of web applications and web extensions for the company's Chrome browser and its upcoming Chrome OS operating system. "Developers can now start uploading apps and experiment with packaging them, installing them in Chrome...and integrating our payments and user authentication infrastructure," the company said in a blog post.

Despite the fact that open source has specialty label-and-business-card programs, most users are going to continue to create their documents in the word processor they feel most comfortable with like OpenOffice.org Writer. It is a good choice; it provides design wizards that simplify creating print-ready documents for standard label templates, and OpenOffice’s mail merge backend is quite powerful

The Linux kernel has potentially been at risk from a flaw that has been present in Linux since 2003, according to a new finding from security researcher Invisible Things Lab. And while the flaw has now been patched in the mainline Linux kernel, it's not clear yet if all Linux distros have implemented the patch -- potentially leaving them open to exploitation by attackers.

One of the things about the Android platform that appeals to many in the Linux community is the fact that it's based extensively on open source, Oracle lawsuits notwithstanding. The primary way to write applications for an Android-based phone is still Java. Google provides a Software Development Kit (SDK) with all the documentation, libraries and tools you need. There's even an add-on for the open-source Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to help you along.

This collection of words is a bit of a rant, I'm afraid. It's about what some call preaching to the choir or more specifically, not preaching to the choir. The Ubuntu Linux crowd prides itself on being a glowing example of the Free Software community at work. Actually, the Free Software community as a whole prides itself on being a model of the ultimate distributed work group, having, through its collective talents, created the greatest operating system of all time, including the software that runs on that OS. I'm only exaggerating a little tiny bit. But I digress . . .

Back in July we reported on the 0 A.D. game going open-source, an OpenGL real-time strategy title that had been in development for nearly a decade but hadn't yet had a stable release so the decision was made to take the game open-source in hopes of spurring new development efforts. Well, just a little over a month after that announcement, the first alpha release of 0 A.D. is now available.