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Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, says some progress has been made towards what he calls cadence, an alignment of versions and release schedules, between distributions, even though his earlier proposals of a formal alignment between Debian and Ubuntu were not taken up. He points to an informal synchronisation between Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Debian Squeeze on the Kernel, GCC, Python, OpenOffice.org, Perl and Boost versions, as an example of progress.

Forget Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and the rest. We put the seven other browsers through the PC Pro grinder, with surprising results.

LXer Feature: 15-Mar-2010

This past week on LXer we had Jonathan Schwartz reminiscing in "Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal", a newbies guide to hacking the Linux kernel, Phoronix reviews power and memory usage in the various desktop environments, Former Sun chief open source officer Simon Phipps joins the OSI board, Jack Deslippe explains why he no longer uses Apple products and last but not least my editorial on why Windows users have no Choice. Enjoy!

When you have Mark Shuttleworth as your backer, as commercial Linux distributor Canonical does, it is a bit like having money in the bank when the bank also believes fervently in your cause. It is a rare combination, and one that has allowed the Ubuntu project to reach out from its Linux desktop beginnings into commercial servers - and with the latest releases, cloudy infrastructure - without having the profit pressure that most startups have to deal with as they try to grow.

Often, even if we do catch a virus, it's not so difficult to eradicate it using installed anti-virus—but if your system has been crippled, try using Linux to scan the drive for viruses instead. As any Linux veteran knows, one of Linux's greatest uses is fixing unbootable drives—recovering files, deleting files, and even killing viruses. For those of you that aren't quite as well-versed in Linux, technology blog gHacks has a tutorial for doing just that, though we recommend a few tweaks to their process.

The trial between the SCO Group and Novell over the question of whether or not the copyrights to Unix were sold together with the Unix distribution rights has taken another turn. As many SCO witnesses gave hearsay evidence during the oral hearing at the Court of Appeals, Novell filed a petition with the Tenth Circuit Supreme Court. Novell has asked the Supreme Court to clarify whether a copyright is inherently included in a transfer of software distribution rights or whether a distribution contract leaves it up to the buyer to determine which of the copyrights that aren't explicitly mentioned are transferred.

Do you want to remove bloat from your Linux installation? Are you looking to enable extra features that aren't provided by your distro? Fancy trying some of the cutting-edge patches doing the rounds? You'll need to recompile your kernel, and while it might look like black magic if you've never done it before, it's actually pretty straightforward. Read on for everything you need to know...

There's a large selection of free and open source (FOSS) operating systems available these days, and choosing the right one for any given circumstance can be quite a challenge. This article is intended to help you pick the best operating system for your needs and experience level. Although this article is geared primarily toward those who have little to no experience with FOSS operating systems, we've included some pointers for more savvy open source users – say, those who use a FOSS operating system at home and would like to deploy one on the job.

The Linux Foundation has announced sessions for its Collaboration Summit, scheduled for Apr. 14-16 at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco. This year's event features a full-day workgroup on MeeGo, as well as discussions of Linux topics including toolchain, cloud computing, printing, filesystems, ISV porting, and open source compliance.

Social networking and voting site Digg is rewriting its underlying software infrastructure in an effort to improve performance and scalability. Part of that effort involves moving away from the MySQL database that has helped to power Digg since its creation. In MySQL's place, Digg is going with an open source NoSQL non-relational database called Cassandra that was originally created by Facebook. As part of the migration effort from MySQL to Cassandra, Digg developers built a tool to help move data from one database to the other. The tool could soon be open source, helping other developers make the same move.

On Sunday at SCALE 8x, Inkscape developer Jon Cruz presented a talk entitled "Why Color Management matters to Open Source and to You," putting the need for color management into real-world terms for the average Linux user, outlining current development work on the subject at the application and toolkit levels, and giving example color-managed workflows for print and web production. Color management is sometimes unfairly characterized as a topic of interest only to print shops and video editors, but as Cruz explained at the top of his talk, anyone who shares digital content wants it to look correct, and everyone who uses more than one device knows how tricky that can be.

Open Source For America (OSFA), an organisation created to promote the use of open source in government, has denounced the IIPA's "Special 301" call saying it is irresponsible and misleading. The International Intellectual Property Association (IIPA) had called for the US Trade Representative to place countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and India, on a "Special 301" watch list, normally reserved for dictatorships or repressive regimes, because the governments advocate the use of open source. OSFA say that this request is "both irresponsible and misleading in its characterisation of OSS".

Firefox 3.6—the latest version of the popular open source Web browser—was officially released in January, but there are still many users who have not yet updated. In an effort to increase awareness about the availability of version 3.6, Mozilla announced today that it will start rolling out upgrade notifications to its users through the browser's built-in update system. According to Mozilla's statistics, the new version has already been downloaded over 100 million times since its release in January. That doesn't include the significant number of existing users who have already migrated to 3.6 by using the browser's built-in upgrade system without being prompted to do so.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at a conference in Abu Dhabi this week, confirmed that the Chrome OS operating system is on track for delivery in the second half of this year. While we already know that it’s headed for netbooks, there are new reasons to believe that its brightest future may be as an adjunct OS on netbooks and tablets. Google is taking several big gambles with its upcoming OS, not the least of which is that it will require users to work with all data in the cloud. That will rule out countless applications and utilities that are, in some cases, beloved to users, and there is a good chance that Google’s cloud-only gamble could backfire. But what if Google adopts an “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy with its Linux-based operating system, and oversees its shipment on netbooks and tablet devices alongside other OSes? If the idea sounds far-fetched, check out the video below from Mobile World Congress, in which Freescale shows a $199 tablet computer concept that runs Chromium OS (the open-source core of Chrome OS), Linux and Android.

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) allows you to log into a full desktop on a remote server (as opposed to just opening windows on your local machine, as with X11 over SSH). It can be very useful, and it's very fast to set up.

The Linux Foundation has announced sessions for its Collaboration Summit, scheduled for Apr. 14-16 at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco. This year's event features a full-day workgroup on MeeGo, as well as Linux sessions ranging from cloud computing to desktop distros to open source compliance.

Canonical is burying Ubuntu's traditional brown theme and is adopting a new visual style for version 10.04, which is scheduled for release in April. The new theme was revealed last week as part of Canonical's broader effort to overhaul Ubuntu's branding and visual identity. The new theme includes a richer color palette and a number of stylistic enhancements. The change that has generated the most controversy is the placement of the window management buttons in the left-hand side of the titlebar. In response to some of the concerns that have been raised by users, Canonical designer Ivanka Majic has written a blog entry that describes the reasons behind the change. Majic is also seeking additional feedback from the Ubuntu community.

The CE Linux Forum (CELF) has opened registration and announced speakers for its Embedded Linux Conference on Apr. 12-14 in San Francisco. The event will feature keynote speakers Greg Kroah-Hartman and Matt Asay, and offer over 50 sessions on embedded Linux topics including flash file-systems, RT-Preempt, security, Moorestown, and Android.

As Phyllis Diller would attest, a face lift isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most things — legalese included — can use a good going over from time to time, and that's just what the good people at Mozilla will be doing this year. The face being lifted, as it were, is the well-known Mozilla Public License, the legal agreement that covers use of the organization's many software projects. The original MPL, version 1.0, was released some twelve years ago, the result of what Mozilla Foundation Chair Mitchell Baker describes as "frantic drafting." A second version (1.1) followed, and continues to be the license in force for Mozilla users everywhere.

Former Sun chief open source officer Simon Phipps is joining the Open Source Initiative (OSI) board effective April 1st. Let's hope Phipps can shake the organization up a bit. I'd hazard a guess that many newcomers to the open source community are partially or even wholly unaware of the OSI and what it's meant to do, because the OSI has not been a terribly dynamic organization over the past few years. The OSI is considered the steward of the Open Source Definition (OSD), and is the body that approves new open source licenses. But its influence has been considerably on the wane for some time now.