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The announcement a few days ago of Google's new Chrome OS was simultaneously shocking and expected. It's a typically understated and quietly ambitious move on behalf of Google. It's also proof -- if it were needed -- that Google people are supremely smart. They have their sights firmly set on the future as well as the here and now. Chrome OS is initially targeted at netbook computers but it's anticipated it will spread to more mainstream computing devices as time goes on. Like Intel's Moblin OS, Chrome OS is a proof of concept that will use the hothouse environment of netbook computing to grow and mature.

When the Open Source Channel Alliance — launched by Red Hat and Synnex — hosts its first conference for VARs and channel partners in late July, a surprise guest will be on hand: Hewlett-Packard. Here’s the scoop and the implications for channel partners.

I've been holding onto a bunch of audio since the SCALE 7x show in February, and it's way past time to start unleashing it. Rather than take an extra six months to start cutting the audio, I'm just going to post it here in its gory entirety. Today I have my interview with Karsten Wade, whose official title is Fedora community gardener. See ... he's a gardener because he's growing community for the Fedora Project.

The nature of the enterprise desktop is changing, and the emphasis now is on instant accessibility, mobility and flexibility - attributes which Linux, on the server, desktop, netbook or mobile device, is well placed to provide In a world on the move, a fast and elegant browser is the key to open every door. The network is the computer, and everything you need can be accessed from the cloud, which may reside at the hub of the LAN or across the wider network.

The Symbian Foundation has released its first open source software package, the first step in the organization's plan to eventually open source the entire Symbian mobile operating system. The Symbian Foundation was set up by in June 2008 by Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, NTT DoCoMo, Texas Instruments, Vodafone, Samsung, LG and AT&T to oversee the development of the Symbian OS as an open source platform, licensed under the Eclipse Public Licence (EPL). The OS had previously been developed as proprietary software by the Symbian Foundation.

Linux distributions strive to include all the useful applications that users will need, but a quality video editor has been lacking for quite some time. Now with KDE4 getting better and better, could an application like Kdenlive fill that gap?

If Netbook users rejected Linux in the past why should Linux repackaged with a Google brand fare any better?

The economy may have faltered, but the Internet continues growing by leaps and bounds as people keep moving online in droves -- and at faster speeds.

At the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit much cross-desktop work has been done. The days we have are being used for the Cross Desktop Tracks and during the talks there are KDE and Gnome developers mingling everywhere. Cross desktop sessions included bug triage, metadata sharing, instant messaging and sharing personal data cross-desktop with CouchDB. Read more about the results!

Ubuntu's maker, Canonical Ltd., is defiant that it can maintain its edge in the desktop Linux space despite Google Inc.'s upcoming Chrome operating system. Google may possess brand recognition and engineering resources that dwarf the 200-employee, reported $30-million-yearly-revenue Canonical, but Chrome OS's ascent "is no slam dunk just because you make an announcement," says Gerry Carr, marketing manager for Canonical. Carr told Computerworld today that building a user-friendly operating system is "harder than putting a new feature on a search engine."

I'm sure most of (if not all) KDE users are familiar with Gwenview, especially since it became the default image viewer in KDE4. Gwenview is not only a powerful viewer for images, but also a basic image manipulation application, and with version 2.3 it allows even video previews. Although video support was available in 1.4 (which was for KDE3), it was missing in the KDE4 port of Gwenview, but with this new release shipping with the upcoming KDE 4.3, video support is back.

Over the past few years, Ubuntu has emerged as the champion among Linux distros. However, its standing is now under attack on multiple fronts. Windows 7 is attacking from the right, Android is attacking from the left and now Google has sent another attack right up the center: Chrome-OS.

LinuxCertified Inc, a leading provider of Linux training and services, announced its next Embedded and Real-Time Linux Development class to be held in San Francisco Bay Area from July 15th - 17th, 2009.

"All Things have an End," said Jonathan Swift, "and a Pudden has two." Such is the case for Ubuntu as well, and later this month the first of the ends will come due for its longstanding legacy, the Dapper Drake. The Ubuntu release cycle is relatively unique among Linux distributions in that it occurs exactly every six months, without exception — almost. The odd duck amongst the Ubuntu releases is Ubuntu 6.06, Dapper Drake — its version numbering reveals it was released in June, while all other releases have arrived in April or October (X.04 or X.10). Nonetheless, the release was groundbreaking, including for the first time a number of features now taken for granted, among them graphical installation from the LiveCD, an improved — and now much bemoaned — Human theme, and a number of next-generation software packages, including MySQL 5.0, Firefox 1.5, and OpenOffice 2.0 among others.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wonders: is the Mono programming environment really a Microsoft threat to Linux, or is this just a tempest in a tea-cup? It depends on who you ask.

The KnowARC1 project brings Globus2 packages to Debian Linux, paving the way for many Grid projects to be included in the popular distribution.

Makers of instant-on Linux environments say Google's Linux-based Chrome operating system won't interfere with growth in their markets and may help accelerate interest in quick-boot Linux platforms.

As Devin Coldewey pointed out on a recent CrunchGear post, many people seems to be getting over-exited about the new Google ChromeOS. I think that many bloggers are making more of ChromeOS than what it actually is. Maybe it is time to sum up what Google's new OS is and what it is not!

Ace coder Akkana Peck didn't want to keep a tab open in a browser all day every day just to keep an eye on Twitter, and none of the available Linux clients had what she was looking for. Either they required installing something like Mono or Adobe Air, or they had nasty bugs. And then she found out about Python-Twitter and how to write her own. (Beginners can do this too!)

Argh, there have been about a zillion articles and blog posting declaring the future of computing and a coming "OS War" between Microsoft and Google. Paaalease. Although I myself am writing yet another piece of content related to Google Chrome OS, I feel compelled to do so because the vast majority of everything I've seen so far is simply rubbish... and I don't often call things rubbish.