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Earlier this year NVIDIA introduced the ION, which is their new system platform that pairs a GeForce 9400M GPU with an Intel Atom processor to make it an appealing platform for those desiring a netbook or nettop computer but are interested in a higher level of graphics performance than what is currently possible with Intel's integrated graphics. Products using the NVIDIA ION have been slow to emerge, but in recent weeks, we have begun seeing more devices around, including those from smaller manufacturers. One company that is now selling an ION-powered nettop is ZaReason, which is a Linux-focused hardware company. In this article we have a whole arsenal of Linux-based tests showing off the NVIDIA graphics performance with the Intel Atom processor under Linux.

The rise of the netbook has been an extraordinary saga. When the Asus Eee PC was first launched at the end of 2007, it seemed to come from nowhere: there was no real precedent for such a low-cost, small machine, using solid state storage and running GNU/Linux.

It might seem strange to put a phone operating system on a netbook, but Don Reisinger thinks it might be a better choice than Windows 7. Acer announced that it's bringing Google Android to its line of netbooks. It's planning to release an Acer netbook with Google Android installed in the third quarter of 2009. This is a major announcement: right now, Acer offers a variety of netbooks under its Aspire One line and they all have Windows running natively when shipped. For the first time, it's Google - not Linux - that will take Microsoft on in the PC space. And by the sound of things, Acer wants to see Android take off.

Google has announced the Android Scripting Environment (ASE) which allows Android users to write and run scripts in Python, Lua and BeanShell on an Android phone. Scripts have access to many of the Android APIs and are able to start activities, send text messages, make phone calls and read location and other sensor information.

At Research In Motion's Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando last month, Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of the BlackBerry maker candidly shared with ZDNet Asia's sister site, Silicon.com, about touchscreen devices, CIOs and the future of the BlackBerry.

Vyatta, the feisty open source startup that is trying to take router market share from Cisco and Juniper - is getting an injection of $10 million today. The $10 million is Vyatta's 'C' round of financing and is led by Citrix Systems.

After numerous delays the Red Hat-financed open source project Fedora has released its Linux distro in version 11. Changes include the usual desktop updates like Gnome 2.26 and KDE 4.2 and the kernel 2.6.29.3.

A way back I blogged in a self-important and knowing way about Why People Don’t Use GNU/Linux. I'd like to update that now, and thus the appearance of The Four Eyes:

This tutorial shows how to set up a high-availability storage with two storage servers (Debian Lenny) that use GlusterFS. Each storage server will be a mirror of the other storage server, and files will be replicated automatically across both storage servers. The client system (Debian Lenny as well) will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86-64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

Facing up to 70 years in a US prison, self-confessed NASA hacker Gary McKinnon is now getting desperate as extradition beckons.

Should Microsoft be scared about Google expanding its mobile OS Android to netbooks? Well, how scared can a company be when it owns 98 percent market share of something? Not very. Let's face it: The netbook "battle" between Windows and Linux is a straight-up massacre.

OpenSolaris came out with its third release last week and within a year there seems to have been some pretty good progress. But with the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle earlier this year, the biggest question hanging over OpenSolaris is whether Oracle will decide to continue with the project. I'll come to that later.

After a year-and-a-half's worth of work, Intel hacker Sarah Sharp announced that Linux will be the first operating system supporting USB 3.0.

BenQ is readying a netbook boasting an 11.6-inch display, optional HSPA, "eight hour" battery, and the largest (500GB) HDD (hard disk drive) we've heard of. In addition to offering the "Joybook Lite U121 Eco" for Linux and Windows XP, BenQ also announced an upcoming Android netbook.

My Acer A1 netbook that I purchased three months ago has already had four operating systems installed and run on it — it shipped with Windows XP, then it had ref=”Ubuntu Netbook Remix 8.04, then I upgraded to UNR 9.10, then I went back to UNR 8.04. Oh and I burned an image of the Moblin OS onto USB and took that for a test drive, too. I’ve also used the Linpus OS that shipped on my wife’s Acer A1 and felt stunted and limited on both Linpus and Windows XP. So far, my preference is UNR 8.04.

As I write this, the new Mac news is coming out and Microsoft just decided to back down from limiting Windows 7 Starter Edition to no more than three applications. So, why do I think you may want to buy a Linux desktop instead? Easy: Price. The Macbook still starts at $999. The new 13.3" display. MacBook Pros starts at $1,199. That's great! If you've got that kind of money to spend…

We are pleased to announce that Untangle 6.2 is now available for download. Highlights of the release are our new multiWAN services: WAN Balancer and WAN Failover. Also included in this release is Ad Blocker, for filtering out banner advertisements.

ANALYSIS: The war between open source and Microsoft Windows to be the operating system of choice for netbooks is hotting up, with some major skirmishes last week. But who is winning? Netbooks running open source were the star of last week's Computex show, which saw a flurry of demonstrations of Linux, Moblin and Android-based devices, noted Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation.

The KDE and GNOME communities are happy to announce the Platinum sponsors of the upcoming Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. Nokia's Qt Software and Maemo will be the main sponsors of the event, which will be held from 3rd to 11th of July 2009 in Las Palmas on Gran Canaria, Spain.

This week I decided to take a look at a lesser known distribution called Wolvix Linux. Wolvix is based on Slackware and, according to the Wolvix site, is geared toward the home user. Wolvix uses the lightweight Xfce desktop environment and provides a somewhat greater range of apps than some of the other distributions. But how well does it really work for home users? Is it worth downloading and installing it to your system? We'll find out in this review. Please note that the version I looked at is a beta.