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This quarter was all about constructing the fireworks of the future for Linux vendor Red Hat. You don't see much happening at the moment, but all the ingredients for a massive eruption are there. In its first quarter of fiscal 2009, Red Hat produced $0.08 of GAAP earnings per share on revenue of $156.6 million. That's a 32% sales increase over last year, while profits held steady. But the numbers don't tell the whole story here

After 18 months of widespread consultation with community and corporate interests, the third versions of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) were released one year ago on 29 June 2007. In November, they were joined by the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL). Looking back at these licenses today, observers of free and open source software (FOSS) judge them a modest success, and credit them with continuing to educate people about free software.

Low-cost PC maker Everex this week said it had agreed to be acquired by systems integrator Newmarket Technology for an undisclosed sum. Newmarket said it will buy 75 percent of Everex's shares from parent company First International Computer, a Taiwan-based PC vendor. Everex is well-known for the Linux-based Cloudbook, an inexpensive ultraportable notebook computer like the Asus Eee PC, which it introduced earlier this year. In April, Everex announced Cloudbook Max, an ultraportable laptop that includes WiMax mobile broadband capabilities.

There is a local radio show here in Phoenix that is as cool as it gets. Its called The Gutsy Geeks Computer Show. Michael Cady, Nick Coons and Richard "Mr. Modem" Sherman host the show every Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. on 1310 KXAM here in Phoenix. This week's show features your humble Editor-in-Chief as a guest. I have been on the show several times before and have always had a great time.

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On March 11 I decided to move away from using Microsoft Windows XP as my primary work operating system on my IBM-supplied Thinkpad T60p. I've offered progress reports on how I was getting along. Through all of this I kept a reduced Windows XP partition on the machine "just in case."

With Ubuntu, Canonical has had notable success in convincing people to switch from other platforms, but potential Ubuntu users are still running into trouble in several areas. Having spent some time on Canonical's forums, I've identified 10 points that seem to be common sticking points for new users -- that is, problems that have the potential to prevent a new user from adopting Ubuntu in the long term. These problems span the entire Ubuntu experience, but they all have two things in common: they are all serious enough to evoke the dreaded "I tried Linux but it didn't work" excuse, and they are all solvable.

Sometime back, I had a couple of encounters with OpenSUSE, the so-called community distribution which was started by Novell in 2005. Neither of them was exactly salutary. For example, in October last year, version 10.3 was released and my efforts to see what it was all about were frustrated to a large extent by the downloads themselves.

Calao Systems has started shipping half a dozen expansion modules for its tiny USB key-sized Linux computer. The company has also launched a new low-powered USB computer that runs FreeRTOS, and offers CAN and LIN (local interconnect network) bus expansion.

What's new in this release (see below for details):

- Many more gdiplus functions implemented.
- Improved graphics tablet support.
- Many Richedit fixes and improvements.
- Support for HWND_MESSAGE windows.
- A lot of new MSHTML functions.
- Many fixes in MSI registry handling.
- Initial implementation of the inetmib1 DLL.
- Improvements to the quartz renderers.
- Various bug fixes.

If you work some of the time on your laptop and some of the time on your desktop box, making sure that your work is updated on both machines is a must. Many tools can help you accomplish this, from command-line tools such as scp and rsync to generic graphical applications like Konqueror or Krusader, to more specific tools like Unison. Komparator and KDiff3, a couple of KDE applications with interesting features, may offer better ways of syncing your work.

"I've always done the things that nobody else wanted to do," Michelle Bisson says, explaining how she became the only woman on the core team for the Joomla! content management system. "I say, 'Oh, that needs to be done? Okay, I'll do what I can.'" This outlook is responsible not only for making her one of the founders of the Joomla! project, but also for giving her an unusual degree of insight into how non-developers can contribute to free and open source software projects (FOSS).

Steganos Locknote is a handy little GPL-licensed utility for Windows, built using the Crypto++ class library. It is designed to keep text files secure, so you can store your sensitive information and passwords without having to worry about the information falling into the wrong hands. At 312KB, Locknote is quick and easy to download, and requires no installation. Once you have it, just double-click the icon. Locknote presents you with a small text window with instructions for using the program. Highlight and erase the instructions (don't worry, Locknote displays the same instructions each time you open it) and type or paste your own notes into the window.

In a move aimed at consolidating their efforts to support Linux use on mobile phones, the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum is merging into the LiMo (Linux Mobile) Foundation. The two groups — consortiums of suppliers of components such as chip sets, Linux operating systems, mobile application stacks and handsets, as well as regional and global wireless service providers — said they hope that joining forces will make the platform stronger.

Text editors are important for many tasks, from editing configuration files, nudging cron jobs, and manipulating XML files to quickly pushing out a README. Luckily, there are a number of interesting editors available. Here's a brief introduction to nine intriguing choices. While some may be better suited to certain tasks, it's no one tool is better than another for all tasks. Try them all and use the ones you like best.

June is Bandwidth Conservation Month (well, not officially, but let's say that it is), so if you have multiple machines running an APT-powered Linux distribution such as Debian or Ubuntu, you should take a look at apt-proxy, a utility that caches package downloads in a shared pool for all interested parties on your LAN. This saves you both the time and the bandwidth it costs to download the same updates for more than one computer.

After steadily losing membership this year, one of the earliest mobile Linux groups will close and join another faster growing initiative. On Thursday, the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum plans to announce that its activities will be folded into the LiMo Foundation starting in July. The groups had slightly different activities although for a time many companies were members in both. The loss of one such group is likely good for the overall mobile Linux market, which has been criticized for being fragmented.

Red Hat Inc (RHT.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest publicly traded provider of Linux software, reported on Wednesday a quarterly profit that met Wall Street expectations as its revenue grew 32 percent. Net income rose 7 percent to $17.3 million, or 8 cents per share, in its fiscal first quarter, from $16.2 million, or 8 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.

While thinking about some of the recent stories on the over-hyped Windows XP on the XO I realized how ridiculous it seems for anyone to get excited about an operating system released in 2001. An operating system that is the successor of Windows ME! So instead of going down memory lane and mocking Microsoft I decided to compile a little overview of a cutting edge Sugar demo that I was shown when I was at OLPC HQ in Cambridge, MA some weekends ago. The demo setup was prepared by Alex, an intern at OLPC, and its goal is to show off some of the cool features that you can get to use on your XO when you spend some time tweaking the thing.

First thing out of the gate on Monday's news cycle was the announcement from HP that it is committing its Tru64 Unix Advanced File System (AdvFS) code to an open source license. Not just any open source license, either; AdvFS is now under the GNU General Public License (v2), which officially makes AdvFS free software.

Linux is coming to an ultraportable near you! Sure, the oft-touted “year of the Linux desktop” is seen in the same light as such notable phrases like “the cheque’s in the mail”, “I’ll respect you in the morning” and “Duke Nukem Forever is being released” but there’s no denying the smash-hit success Linux is enjoying in the budget price ultraportable market. These are the Linux desktops that will catch on and here’s why.